6 Months Until Christmas

Happy Leon Day! It is officially six months until Christmas.

Leon Day is quite the event at the North Pole. While there are not many organized festivities this year everyone is in the spirit.

Leon, of course, is Noel spelled backwards.

That gives the whole day a kind of backwards theme. Some elves wear their clothes backwards. Some even talk backwards. The whole day is kind of backwards.

It’s goofy but it’s a fun kind of way to mark the halfway point to Christmas.

There are serious things to mark about this time of the year, too.

Over in Santa’s workshop, for example, they are taking a good look at Christmas decorations right now – both new and old.

Christmas decorating really is a favorite activity but Santa makes sure we mark time with decorations properly. They come down in mid-January, which always makes everyone a little sad.

But they go up as part of Christmas in July, and people really get into that.

They start with the tiny little lights on the trees, which of course takes the most time. But by the time Halloween is over all the decorations are pretty much up.

The search for Santa has kind of taken a back seat right now to getting ready for Christmas in July. The radio stations are all refreshing their music to get ready for it and the food committees are meeting.

Do we do Christmas foods for Christmas in July? Yes, we get that question a lot and the answer is yes, we do. But they are usually with some sort of little twist. Like fudge. Christmas fudge is a very popular frozen treat in July. The kids here just love it.

We also have frozen eggnog pops.

Someone asked if it is warm or cold here for Christmas in July. That’s a really good question and the answer is that it is a little warmer in July – but not warm like a lot of people think about in July. We don’t have real seasons other than it is very light at this time of the year at the North Pole. The sun is up nearly all the time. But we really do not have traditionally hot summer weather like many areas of the world.

That means our Christmas in July festivities still have a lot of traditional winter activities. There are snowball fights, sled dog races and ice skating parties.

We do have some summer-like things we do just because they are fun – things like water balloon battles, potato sack races and dunking booths. We’ll tell you more about them next month when it is Christmas in July.

In the meantime, I can tell you that Operation Merry Christmas is on track and that we’re really glad to be celebrating Leon Day this week at the North Pole.

Wherever you are, no matter if it is winter or summer, we hope you mark the halfway point to Christmas in some special way too!