Whether you have a kid or someone in your life that’s a kid at heart, what better way to celebrate the holidays than a personal phone call from the big man himself? No, we aren’t talking about Donald Trump. We are talking about Santa Claus and thanks to Google, he’ll make your loved one’s pre-Xmas a little more spirited with a custom message.

Now I just tried it with my 4 year old grandnephew and he was thrilled at getting a call from Saint Nick, and a bit shocked. The setup is fairly easy. You go the website that Gmail set up called Send a Call from Santa. It asks you a few questions, starting out with what your birthday is, presumably to keep the phone calls from kids trying it over and over, and then proceeds to ask you about 12 or so drop down questions (I didn’t actually count them) about what the recipient of the call is all about. You know, in like a mad libs sort of way, what they like, what you want him to say Santa is doing, what he wants left for him when he visits, etc. It even gives you options in case the name may be a bit hard to pronounce. At worst case, you can also have it skip the name if necessary. Then once you get all the information in, you can preview the whole message on your computer before “sending it out.” One thing it doesn’t do is really give the child the chance to ask for anything, but there is one question that allows you to pick from a set of options like a new toy etc.

Then you enter your phone number and the phone number of the recipient, hit the button and right then they get a call from Santa. So you might want to make sure that the person that you are sending it to is around and answers the call. I don’t think it calls back later if they aren’t home. Instead, you would probably have to do the whole thing again. Oh, and I suggest if you have two computers in the house, you do it on one that they can’t see or at someone else’s, otherwise the illusion would be ruined.

The service is only available to Canada and US residents and will call Google Voice lines through the net, standard landlines, cable and DSL modem phones, and cellphones. Basically anything that can be reached through a standard phone number.

And so if you want to give the children a little bit of a Christmas thrill early this holiday season, check it out. It’s a lot of fun.