Today is December 1, the first day you’d open a door on an Advent calendar. For several years, I took part in a Virtual Advent Tour, where bloggers, predominantly of the bookish variety, composed posts about their holiday season and, throughout December, we’d go to their blogs to read about favorite holiday customs, foods, songs, celebrations, movies, books, memories, and traditions (from the past, as well as current ones).

I’ve decided to attempt to run a version of the Virtual Advent Tour this year myself. I’d hoped to be together enough to create a standalone site for it, but it just didn’t happen. Obviously, I also wasn’t together enough to share this information with anyone else prior to now. But I miss this blogging tradition too much to throw in the towel on the idea, even if it is a little late.

My hope is that other bloggers (bookish, knitterly, personal, etc.) would like to take part and that you will be willing to share your own winter holiday post sometime this month. It can be as simple or as complex as you’d like, and there’s no need to tell me ahead of time what you’re going to write about. (In the five previous years I took part, I wrote about an annual tuba concert, a Christmassy book, a weird Canadian cartoon from the ’70s, a cookie recipe, making a Christmas mix, and D.C.’s Christmas scene.) Also, if you celebrate some other winter holiday or have some other December festivity you’d like to share, please feel free to write about that. I love reading about others’ celebrations. If you’d like to take part, please leave me a comment below letting me know where and on what date(s) you’d like me to send folks your way. If no one else wants to play along, then I guess I’ll just share my own 24 random holiday posts.

Today, we’ll start with one of my favorite holiday tv specials (and cast albums) ever, the 1979 John Denver and the Muppets: A Christmas Together. In this very meta show, the cast of The Muppet Show and singer-songwriter John Denver develop their holiday tv special.

Here is Miss Piggy, Gonzo, Rowlf, Fozzie, Lew, Beaker, and various members of the Electric Mayhem performing “Christmas Is Coming”:

If you’ve never seen this special, or if you’d like to watch it again, here’s the hour-long special in its entirety:

Links to other holiday happenings on the web:

• Home for the Holidays at What Sarah Read
• Goodreads contest to win a copy of My True Love Gave to Me, edited by Stephanie Perkins
• DROPS Christmas Calendar with free knitting patterns
• 12 Days of Christmas Book Giveaways from the “Back Cover” columnist at the Roanoke Times (a Facebook account is needed to participate)

Please stop back tomorrow!