it's now officially christmastime

Where I grew up, Christmas season didn’t start the day after Halloween, nor did it start the day after Thanksgiving. It started on December 1st - the day the Advent Calendar went up on the wall, and we could start counting down the days by peeling back a little bit of cardboard every morning.

Today the unstoppable Leslie Harpold kicks off Advent Calendar 2006, where each day from now until the 25th you get “a Christmas memory, a holiday link and something special.”  Mind you, this is no auto-posted template-driven affair; each day’s entry is a lovingly hand-crafted and custom-designed thing of beauty. Want proof? This is the Leslie’s sixth year of online Advent Calendars; after you’ve peeled back today’s, revisit December 1sts from 2005, 2004, 2003, 2002 and 2001.