Dear friends and readers, real and imaginary:

I hope that 2007 has brought you a satisfactory sequence of months and weeks. For me, this year has been like attending an auction on the roof of a train: mile-a-minute decisions and actions proceeding with dangerous speed, resulting in an overabundance of unexpected blessings that I keep expecting to fly away.

As advent calendars, Rick Dees and that guy who announces NASA space shuttle launches would love to tell you, there are only 14 days until Christmas. Soon, there will be 13, and depending on when you’re reading this, it might even be Christmas already. Since my impending holidays will involve precarious wintertime road travel, I’d like to give you your Christmas gifts early. Only for the sake of alliteration, I shall not call them “gifts,” but “contributions.”

Christmas Contribution Number 1: A Christmastime Podcast

This 45-minute, 16-track Christmas mix brings you a cheerful smattering of Christmas songs that are both piping-fresh and well-aged. If you are looking for a little bit of seasonal music to spice up your Christmas parties, road trips, work days and iPods, this mix is here to help. It’s called “Yuletide Cheer.”

Tracklist:
1. Ron Sexsmith: Maybe This Christmas
2. Sufjan Stevens: Come On! Let’s Boogie to the Elf Dance!
3. Beach Boys: Little Saint Nick
4. Hawksley Workman: Common Cold
5. The Rat Pack: Have a Holly Jolly Christmas
6. Aimee Mann: Christmastime
7. Otis Redding: Merry Christmas
8. James Brown: Santa Claus Go Straight to the Ghetto
9. Brian Setzer Orchestra: Zat You Santa Claus?
10. The Blind Boy of Alabama (featuring Tom Waits): Go Tell It on a Mountain
11. Son Seals: Lonesome Christmas
12. Chuck Berry: Merry Christmas, Baby
13. Charlie Parker: White Christmas (King Kooba Remix)
14. Erlend Oye: Last Christmas
15. Johnny Cash: Silent Night
16. Sufjan Stevens: O Come, O Come, Emanuel

“Yuletide Cheer” is the name of the mix, and it comes in the form of a podcast. “What on earth is a podcast,” you ask? Well, in this case, it’s one giant MP3 that contains 16 songs, which you can burn to CD, or throw on your MP3 player, or play from your computer.

Click here to download the podcast (41.2 MB).

Christmas Contribution Number 2: Website Remix

Just in time for the holidays, I’ll soon be unleashing a completely redesigned “Kevan Gilbert Online” upon the internet. While the new look won’t exactly be Christmas themed, I decided that ‘twas the season to for some serious website renovations.

Depending on when this Christmas missive reaches your retinas, the new site might already be live. If not, keep your clicking constant and your refreshing rampant, because this site will be “off the hook.” Indeed, it will embody a term I have just now decided to call “profunktionalism.” I haven’t been this excited about the internet since I discovered that you could make sideways smiley faces by combining colons, dashes and brackets.
:-) <----- See??

Anyway, let me tell you about the new look. Thanks to a brilliant WordPress theme by Darren Hoyt called Mimbo, the old Kevan Gilbert Online has been replaced by a tighter, cleaner, shinier version of itself. The site’s design fuses clean professionalism with decidedly hip typography and colour usage, giving it a spit-shine polish that makes things easier to read and funner to click around. I truly hope you like it as much as I do.

Christmas Conclusions

I’m afraid those are all the Christmas contributions I’ve got for us this season. While you can always recycle the old tradition of reading “The Real Story of Christmas” around the family tree, I am essentially all out of yuletide offerings. So in closing, I’d like to wish all of my loyal friends and imaginary readers (or is it the other way around?) the merriest of Christmases, and the happiest of New Years. Download a podcast, click around the new site, and make sure to leave a comment or two.