How to Guarantee Santa Visits Your Home this Christmas

We have all been there: You leave a half-eaten cookie and an empty glass of milk on the coffee table to convince others that Santa made a late-night visit to your home. But that trick works, uh, about once. We all need to up our Santa game!

We’ve put together a few clever ideas that don’t just prove that Santa stopped by on Christmas Eve – it proves he moved in, and he’s going to stay as long as we want! (Don’t worry – he won’t eat much.) Whether you want to showcase Ol’ St. Nick inside your home or out, we’ll show you how to get him to stick around with these Santa-centric digital decorations.

AtmosFX has four unique digital decoration collections that feature Santa Claus as the featured character, sometimes as live action, and sometimes as an animated character. They are:

Santa’s Visit (Animated Santa)
Night Before Christmas (Live-Action Santa)
Santa’s Workshop (Live-Action Santa)
Santa’s Sleigh Ride (Animated Santa)

All of these digital decorations can be used in a multitude of ways – in windows, on walls, and on TVs, computer monitors and tablets. Some also work extremely well on AtmosFX’s Hollusion Projection Material or 3DFX Forms. Even “Moon Mode”! It really depends on how you want you want to showcase your Santa – there’s always a spectacular option for you.

Santa’s Visit was the first of AtmosFX’s Santa-themed digital decorations. The premise of the digital decoration is simple – looking into your house from the outside, it appears that an animated Santa Claus is inside, delivering gifts under the Christmas tree. For this reason, Santa’s Visit is spectacular in windows.

Many people also like to display Santa’s Visit on a TV or tablet, selecting the option that makes it appear that the same scene is seen through a window frame. Some people even frame it so it really looks like a window! The digital decoration collection also has an additional scene called “Festive Fireplace,” which clever decorators will display on a TV or tablet. They’ll even build a fake fireplace to house the tablet, TV or monitor, making it look like there’s a cozy fire burning.

Night Before Christmas is similar to Santa’s Visit, except that the main character is live action. That means when you display this digital decoration in your window, the Santa Claus who delivers gifts and nibbles on a cookie looks even more realistic. In this digital decoration, Santa also sings three joyful Christmas carols.

There are additional features in Night Before Christmas that are particularly stunning. Also like Santa’s Visit, there is a fireplace scene of a roaring fire that people like to display on their TVs or tablets. But in this case, we see a couple of Santa’s assistants – elves! – lowering themselves down the chimney, attempting to extinguish the fire before Santa descends.

Night Before Christmas also was the first holiday-themed digital decoration to be optimized for display on AtmosFX’s 3DFX Form. These are the inflatable mannequin-like props that, when you project on them, it appears like they have come alive. In this case that is St. Nick himself – singing carols and telling stories. Imagine what the kids might think if a three-dimensional singing Santa is the first thing they see on Christmas morning!

Santa’s Workshop is one of AtmosFX’s most popular holiday-themed digital decorations, and it is easy to see why. A live-action Santa is overseeing a frenetic toy workshop where his elves are sometimes helpful, sometimes not. The ambitious animation and the unbridled energy makes this digital decoration so fun, and that’s why it also looks great in windows. But we’ve noticed that many digital decorators like to display it BIG – often outside on their garage doors. The effect is that it appears as though Santa’s whole operation is housed right inside your garage!

For those who have smaller displays, for example, miniature Christmas village setups, we’ve seen Santa’s Workshop copied onto a tablet or an old smartphone. That small screen can be placed in a window in the Christmas village or in a dollhouse, to really dramatic effect. (We should note that ALL the digital decorations listed here can work in a similar way.)

Santa’s Sleigh Ride is AtmosFX’s most recent digital decoration to feature Kris Kringle. While it features him on his sleigh with his reindeer, we’ve seen it capably displayed on windows, walls and TVs. But it is really striking when used in conjunction with AtmosFX’s Hollusion Projection Material, or in a fashion that is sometimes called “Moon Mode.”

When you string Hollusion Projection Material at the roofline of your house and project onto it from below, the material becomes almost invisible and it appears that Santa and his reindeer are aloft, high above your house – even delivering packages via parachute. Similarly, use an AtmosFX Decorating Disc (think hula hoop with material stretched across it) and place it on the roof, it will look as though a full moon has risen above your house, with Santa silhouetted by its light!