Welcome to signups for this year’s Virtual Advent Tour. 2021 marks my seventh year as host of this annual event.

2020 was hard. I mean really hard. And I say that having been extraordinarily lucky. But I think all of us expected this year to be easier. And it … was. But, also, it wasn’t.

And yet, here we are again, less than a month away from Christmas and just over a month until year’s end. Some of us are celebrating with loved ones we couldn’t see last year. Some of us are trying to find ways to navigate through the holidays with holes in our closest circles — and in our hearts. And some built new traditions out of necessity last year and are sticking with them.

However you observe the holidays this year, I’d love for you to share your celebrations with us as part of this year’s Virtual Advent Tour.

As you likely know, a typical Advent calendar is usually a paper-based, time-marking device designed to count down from December 1st until Christmas. Each day, you open a door to unveil a treat of some kind — a hidden scene, piece of chocolate, or some other delight. The Virtual Advent Tour is a bloggers’ take on that. In our version, each morning I’ll point you to a post at someone’s blog in which they share something about their holiday season.

Would you be willing to share a holiday post or two in December? You’d know the date(s) ahead of time (and can request a specific one if you’d like). And you don’t have to decide ahead of time what you want to write about. Your post can be as simple or as complex and in text, video, or audio format.

If you’re looking for inspiration, folks have shared new traditions they’ve adopted, old traditions they keep alive, favorite holiday music, charities, recipes, books, events, memories, and more.

If this sounds fun and you’d like to participate, please leave me a comment on this post telling me what date(s) you’d like. I’ll update this post as people claim days.

A few annual housekeeping notes:

While both the tradition of the Advent calendar and the timing skew Christian, the tour is inclusive and open to anyone who celebrates December holidays of any sort. We love reading about all kinds of celebrations and the traditions you’ve developed around them!

I tend to write my posts shortly after midnight my time (Eastern U.S.) and will schedule them to go live at 6 a.m. If your post is live when I’m writing, I’ll give a little preview and link directly to it. However, if it’s not, no worries. I’ll assume you’ll get it live at some point, and will just embed a song and a link to your blog’s homepage.

I made 2021 Virtual Advent Tour badges in 600px and 400px that you’re welcome to download and use.

If you want to share on social media, I use the hashtag #VirtualAdventTour on Twitter.

Thanks in advance for making this one of my fun December traditions!

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So, Thanksgiving is over, December is practically upon us, and Christmas is now less than a month away. This means this weekend will be spent on several activities:

• Buying and putting up my parents’ Christmas trees
• Getting lights on the big tree, at the very least
• Posting Virtual Advent Tour signups (stop back tomorrow!)
• Figuring out our tree trimming party and getting invites out (we’re back to thinking just one day, but eight hours instead of four and with time blocks folks can sign up for)
• Baking with Mum
• Listening to Christmas tunes
• Playing pool
• Watching Christmas movies
• Finishing at least one of the three Christmas books I brought with me
• Knitting in front of the fire

What’s your weekend hold? Will it be busy or full of relaxation?

Happy Thanksgiving! I hope you had a wonderful holiday. (Or happy Thursday if you don’t celebrate!)

Beauty and gratitude don’t always go hand in hand, but today they do. Here are three beautiful things from my past week:

1. I spent last Thanksgiving alone, Facetiming with my folks to watch the parade and chatting with Rudi, who was out with his mom, on the phone. I don’t think I’ll ever take spending the holiday with them in person for granted again.

2. My brother called to wish us all a happy holiday. He recently made a major life decision, and he sounded so much more relaxed this time than the last few times I’ve talked with him.

3. The table may not have literally groaned under the weight of so many delicious dishes, but I think I heard it sigh contentedly. Mum has spent the past month preparing a couple dishes a week and freezing them, and the only thing that needed to cook from scratch today was the turkey and Rudi’s carrots and peppers dish. I appreciate how much work went into making the holiday meal (it was after 11 last year when I sat down with just three dishes) and the energy required to do it all.

How about you? What’s been beautiful in your past week?

Our drive north today started later than we’d planned, as it nearly always does. To be fair, 4:30 in the morning isn’t the natural departure time for either Rudi or me, so the fact that we were on the road at 9 a.m. is really impressive.

But it also meant there were more people, some of them doing crazy things with their cars. Luckily, we were really only caught in standstill traffic a couple of times, but we’ve made this drive enough times over the years that we have a solid understanding of alternative roads. It’s just that those alternatives put you onto state roads that are just slower and less direct.

We detoured through Princeton and opted to stop at a used music shop for an hour. Their Christmas cd collection was a lot lighter when we left!

In the end we pulled into my parents’ driveway nearly a dozen hours after we left the Burrow. While it was a slow trip, it wasn’t a horrible one.

But I am glad we don’t have to drive back until Monday.

A Thanksgiving tradition for you.

The next time it comes around on the guitar, I invite you to sing along with the chorus, loudly. We’re starting a movement, after all, and they need to hear us.

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic from That Artsy Reader Girl invites us to share fictional characters we’d like to check in on. Here are some of mine:

1. Isola Pribby from The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Schaffer and Annie Barrows
2. Felicity from A Snicker of Magic by Natalie Lloyd
3. The teen protagonists of The Illuminae Files series by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristof
4. Will from Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds
5. Starr from The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
6. Ruth from Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson
7. Claudia from The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E.L. Konigsburg
8. Charles Wallace from A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L’Engle
9. Mary from The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgsen Burnett
10. Miranda from When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead

How about you? Are there characters whose lives you’d like to peek into even after the happily ever after takes place?