Kids at the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario won't get a chance to sit on Santa's knee this year because of flu fears. Instead, they'll get personalized video greetings from St. Nick.

Children at CHEO in Ottawa will be getting video greetings instead of personal visits from Santa this year because of flu fears. (Seth Wenig/Associated Press)"We do everything we can to make sure the children have fun over the holidays," said Marie Belanger, spokeswoman for the Ottawa hospital. "But we decided to cancel the visit months ago when H1N1 first broke out."

She said Santa usually makes a pre-Christmas visit to greet the children who are spending the holidays in the 156-bed hospital.

But Belanger said sick kids won’t miss out on the Christmas ritual entirely, because the hospital has arranged to have video messages that contain photos of the child and a personalized greeting sent to all the children who wanted to see Santa.

Belanger said the messages will be delivered through the “Portable North Pole,” an online service launched by Sympatico.ca and UgroupMedia.

“It’s something that we would have used as well as having the visit of Santa Claus, but it just happened that the timing worked out well this year because we had to cancel Santa’s pre-Christmas visits,” Belanger said.