Another update: Santa Claus has arrived to save the land of Playmobil! I'm outta here, have fun everyone!

UPDATE: I'm going to keep this blog entry up top and active, since there's so many great Christmas stories in the comments section. Feel free to read 'em and add your own. I particularly liked the one about using a car remote to fuck with the neighborhood's Christmas lights...hopefully will have time to read the rest before tonight. I'll make a new entry tomorrow so everyone can compare their holiday loot haul.

Meantime, the Calendar's just about up to date. I've gotta do today's entry before I get going, and we'll wrap it up on Christmas morning. December 22nd's entry includes "Holiday Rice Krispies," an old Christmastime Saturday morning commercial, and a magic wand for two very special animals. For December 23rd, we've got an assortment of holiday sweets from Hostess, "A Charlie Brown Christmas" promo spot, and the beginning of the end for Mare Winningham. I'll make another update when the 24th's entry is up, but if any of you are on your way to wherever you spend the holidays, have a good one!

We're alllmost there! I kept these last two entries pretty short, as the last few and especially the last two are going to be fairly long. December 20th's entry features more Christmas candy, plus that classic CBS "special presentation" bumper that I'm sure some of you will remember. For December 21st, we've got "Winter Lucky Charms" and an old Kodak holiday ad. Of course, both entries include the continuing adventures of our friends from Playmobil. Four more entries to go! I'm doing two more today so we'll be all caught up. Fortunately, I don't have to be at my sister's house for the Christmas Eve Celebrate Good Times Come On till 6 PM tomorrow, and that should give me enough time to complete the saga.

I also wanted to take this time to thank you guys for your continued support of the site -- especially those of you who continually participate in the comments section here on the blog. I don't think it's any secret to longtime readers that I've changed quite a bit in regard to the Internet -- I do what I do, and that's pretty much it. The combination of having done this for so many years mixed with a marked distaste a lot of the time towards "web culture" has made me kinda like a virtual hermit, so this little corner of the site means more to me than it would seem. Frankly, it's been a breath of fresh air to see people willing to participate without a zillion ulterior motives, just for the sake of or enjoyment of it. With the holidays out of the way, it's back to the usual crunch of writing articles again. You know, lots of 'em. That means less playtime, but I'd like to think this part of the site will only grow in the next year. I'm toying with the idea of making comments limited to registered users (or making it an option), if only because it'd let those with an account quickly access their past comments and whatnot. Anyway, that wasn't the point of this paragraph -- I just wanted to wish all you guys a MARY CARSTMARSH, or whatever it is y'all celebrate.

Speaking of articles, I'm very excited about January. Not because of any major projects planned, but because there aren't any projects planned. October was spent on the Halloween Countdown, November was mainly taken up with those massive parade reviews, and you know what I've been doing for December. I'm looking forward to getting back to what the site was built on -- a hodge podge of kiddie culture crap that I and many others share love for. I've got around five or six articles in my head waiting to be written with all the materials right here in front of me, so next month should be fun.

Hey, let's do something interesting with the comments section for this entry. If you've got a Christmas memory, share it with the masses! Whether it's a story about your past celebrations, best or worst presents, or whatever else, feel free to drop a comment. Gimme something to read in-between finishing the calendar, wrapping gifts, and doing the ten trillion other things I gotta do before the 45,000 members of my family congregate to eat calamari and drink themselves stupid tomorrow night.