There were a total of 114 participants this year! And while that number is just a hair shy of the 116 we had last year, it is actually an increase in participation relative to the total site traffic!

As some of you may have noticed, there was a new captain at the helm of the Jinglemas event this year, me, Shakespearicles. Former head, Flutterpriest stepped down, and Petrichord assumed an advisory role. I just want to say what a tremendous honor and privilege it has been to take the reigns of this, the largest annual event on the site! That said, I can completely understand why someone would want to retire from the position. It is not work for the faint of heart.

After assuming command of Jinglemas in May, planning and official preparations for the event began in earnest mid October, with the development of the event staffing, roles, and permissions. The election of a new Head Breezie, and construction the new Excel master spreadsheet for keeping track of participants and the status of stories, a tremendous improvement on the old, clunky, Word master document.

The announcement of the event came, regrettably, before Halloween. The logic of the day was that the event promotion and signup period would last a month, from October 25th to November 25, so that people would have enough time to write from November 25th to December 25th. The unpopular reception of the announcement coming before Halloween was even over, was a sentiment I could sympathize with. Therefore, next year, the event sign-up period will be confined to November 1st to November 25th. And really, that's still plenty of time for active site users to see it.

November 25th
A day that will live in infamy for me.
With 114 names and requests listed on the master spreadsheet, the task came to assign everyone to someone else. I wish I could say it was random. Random would have been easier. Random would have been faster. But I give thanks to the leadership of old, not only for this honor to lead, but also to learn from their past mistakes. Because I knew that time invested at this point in the process would pay dividends in time saved later, at the deadline.

Assigning participants was a meticulous process. Firstly, grouping people into pods. Researching each participant to see who hadn't written a story before, to group the rookies together in the "keep an eye on these" Pod. Figuring out or guessing who has or hasn't seen the movies, or Equestria Girls, and grouping them accordingly. And assigning people to each other within those groups, but no pairs. (Even though that would have been much, much easier. But that way you didn't have the person you were writing for know that they were also writing for you.

But the job was only half done. Next came the task of sending out 114 custom Private Messages for every participant, with all the relevant information about their assigned person, requested prompt, and due date for their group. All in all, the whole process took approximately six hours.

Finally came the writing period.
Of course there were the inevitable drop outs. There were the expected percentage of drop-outs from the event for a variety of reasons. Some as soon as I sent the assignment PM, some mid-way through, and some were no-call no-shows right to and through the deadlines.

Thankfully, the squad of Breezies were ready, willing, and able to go at every turn! It is thanks to them that every last story was delivered to everyone who participated, no later than New Year's Eve, as promised! This promise, and this whole event simply could not have been possible without their help, and I'd like to take this opportunity to acknowledge their exemplary work! Thank you!

I want to give a special thanks to my Head Breezie, TCC56, who worked tirelessly alongside me keeping the master spreadsheet in order, and the event on track. You rose to every challange this event had, and I could not ask for a better #2. Thank you!

And Thank You to everyone who participated! You, the writers, are what make this event what it is. And that is a rousing success of everyone getting their gifts, and writers that had been dormant brought back into the active craft. 114 stories in nine Pods, posted over the course of three days was, admittedly, a bit cramped, and that is something we will definitely remedy next year with (hopefully) this many participants again! Hard work though it was, wrangling the lot of you, I hope to have you all back again next year!

Until then,

7623595
Merry jinglemas!

I had a blast, and will certainly be participating again.
Merry Jinglemas and Happy New Year.

7623595
Merry Jinglemas and a happy new year!

Merry JInglemas! You all did such a great job! Here's to a new year and hopefully another successful Jinglemas in the future!

Congratulations on a successful event, Shakes. Merry Jinglemas and Happy New Year.

As this was my first Jinglemas, I was glad that I was able to participate and I look forward to the next one. Didn't even realize that leadership had been handed over, but both you and TCC56 did an amazing job getting this all organized and functioning smoothly.

Merry Jinglemas!

Excellent work all around! I can tell because I had no idea just how much work went into it until now. It's the effort you don't see that's the most essential.

Merry Jinglemas to all, and to all a good read.

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Alas, for having the job of making everything go smoothly...
the hard truth is that if I do my job right, no one should notice.

Merry Jinglemas!

It was an excellent event this year - relatively smooth, fast, and well-organized. Shakes, you did an amazing job with this.

In my role as Head Breezie this year, I want to give a shout-out to the Breezie team that helped make this happen. In no particular order besides what I scribbled down on a scrap sheet at the beginning of the event:
Alex_
GaPJaxie
Jhoira
Short-tale
applezombi
Level Dasher
Nailah
The Red Parade
Rune Soldier Dan
Yoshikage Kira
daOtterGuy
And of course Shakespearicles.

An additional special additional thanks to ScarletRibbon, who despite not taking part in the event still helpfully volunteered in the Jinglemas Discord to give pre-reading and editing assistance to a good half-dozen-plus writers.

Congrats TCC and Shakes. jinglemas is incredibly tough. But I'm so so happy to see it live on

Well done on a well organised festive event, all! Especially to TCC56 and your menagerie of Breezies, you truly made the event magical, filling in the gaps.

Even though I had a vague notion of the work behind-the-scenes, I’d never really considered the logistics of it till now. Good work is invisible work and all that. So fair play, Shakes, fair play!

Can’t wait to see it next year! I have a special soft spot for this event, being what prompted me to finally write and publish Ponyfic, so it’s important to me.

Though dang, wish I’d known there was a Jinglemas discord with pretending and editing services floating around. That would have been handy! I’m still in that early stage of my FimFiction career, where I haven’t quite yet gotten the contacts to have people I can ask to edit.

Congrats to us all!

7623666

wish I’d known there was a Jinglemas discord

Bruh, the link is on the group's front page.

7623656
And once again showing why you are an outstanding Head Breezie!

7623661
It's a tough job.
But we're tougher.

7623682
Well, how about that.

Don’t think it would have mattered this year, I didn’t have spare time above what I ended up spending (several rounds of self-editing included). Certainly won’t forget in the future, though!

Hooray! Happy Jinglemas everyone!

Merry Jinglemas to all!

Merry Jinglemas all, and a Happy New Year!

7623595
Thanks for organizing everything, and I hope to participate again later this year! Happy New Year!

Thanks for your hard work on everything, you did an excellent job hosting this year!

Reading about the matching process feels like something a bored programmer could help automate, but the more I think of it, the more I’m convinced that it’s a task that requires a grind of manual hard work with no easy workarounds (unless, as you noted, they were assigned randomly or in pairs). Perhaps notes like “zero interest in EqG” could be added to the spreadsheet to simplify future pod selections, but that still leaves writing the PMs and forwarding the relevant part(s) of the request as a manual task.

When I put on my square-faced manager’s mask, NCNS are the worst. At least it’s justifiable grounds for immediate termination in the professional world. Please give me the bad news ASAP so I can move to plan B instead of pulling plan Q out of my plot.

7624539

Please give me the bad news ASAP so I can move to plan B instead of pulling plan Q out of my plot.

As I repeatedly said throughout the event, which makes it extra irritating.