Seeing Tasha pop up in my comments yesterday reminded me that I’d like to give some thought to the Virtual Advent Tour:

For five 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).

After a year of there being no tour, last year I decided rather at the last minute (like, on December 1) to run a version myself, and some people — like Mikaiya, raidergirl3, Tasha, and others — were kind enough to pitch in to help me out. But, I started late and didn’t get the word out enough and there were neither enough people to really help with the writing nor with the reading of the posts to make it feel like a success. What I discovered is that while it’s challenging to come up with the topic for one day, it’s exhausting coming up with 18 or so. And, by the end, I’d put out six or so good quality posts, republished all my previous holiday posts, and thrown together six crappy ones that I felt bad about publishing.

So, I’m going to put out feelers now to see if we can get a bigger pool of people interested in participating this year so that it’s fun for everyone. My hope is that other bloggers and vloggers (bookish, knitterly, personal, etc.) would like to take part and that you will be willing to share your own winter holiday post one day next month. You’d know the date ahead of time (and can request one if you’d like), your post can be as simple or as complex as you’d like, and there’s no need to tell me what you’re going to write about in advance. (In case you’re wondering what one might share, during the first five 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, despite the name and the associated tradition, this isn’t restricted to those who celebrate Christmas: if you celebrate a different winter holiday or have a another December festivity you’d like to share, you’re welcome to participate, too. I love reading about others’ celebrations.

If this sounds like a fun thing you think you’d like to take part in, please leave me a comment below letting me know. I’m going to see what sort of response we get between now and November 15 November 18. and will make a call at that point. If we have enough interest, I’ll go forward with organizing it in the latter half of the month. Also, if you like the idea of the Virtual Advent Tour, even if you don’t want to commit to writing a post yourself, please circulate a link to this post to your social networks over the next 10 days to help spread the word. I hope to have good news for everyone later this month. Thanks in advance!