As you can see by the animated snowfall here on the MLB.com Blogs community hub, there are no baseball games today.

We are here with our 553rd career post (two shy of Manny) to welcome Winter and Christmas and what is regarded in popular culture as “the most wonderful time of the year.” Opening Day probably can stake a legitimate claim for that title, but hey, we are caught up in the holiday spirit right now and we just wanted to wish the best of times with family and friends to you here in the Major League Baseball blogging community.

Want to see the flakes fall on your blog? Just go to “Settings” in your WordPress.com dashboard, and at the bottom select “Snow.” It will drop the white stuff on your blog until Jan. 4, and the best part is, you won’t have to do any shoveling like I already have done twice so far in the New York City suburbs, breaking one shovel in the process. No one ever says, “How can you not be romantic about shoveling snow?” Plus, my English Bulldog King Bingley gets a kick out of trying to chew the shovel blade each time I plunge it at the sidewalk, so it goes twice as slow. He thinks I’m playing.

I hope you found nice gifts for everyone. I have been dishing out MLB.com Shop tips since before Black Friday as the annual MLB.com Gift Guru, and once 9 p.m. ET arrives on Monday (deadline for overnight shipping), the best advice I can give you is an MLB.com Online Gift Certificate, 2014 MLB.TV Premium or our ridiculously popular At Bat app.

Safe traveling if you are among the 70-million-plus Americans expected to hit the road. We don’t have groundskeepers like Murray Cook to follow you around so watch out for yourself. I had to race to beat the Thanksgiving-week weather system that pushed north from the Gulf of Mexico, so I found myself driving the full state of Pennsylvania starting at 8 p.m. that Monday and diving into a motel at 5 in the morning. We made it into Ohio before most of that ice moved in. It was nice to drive through Cincinnati and see Great American Ball Park in offseason slumber along the highway. Our bulldog hated the trip and spent back-to-back nights at an all-night pet hospital due to upper-respiratory infection. We tend to be way too much like Chevy Chase “Vacation” movies in real life so the next couple of weeks it is time for chill mode at home in New York and somehow stick to a 12-week training program for the ASICS LA Marathon on March 9. What about you?

We’d love to see any holiday-themed posts you have, so please feel free to leave a comment here with the full URL so everyone can find their way to your blog. Once they get there, you should have the “Follow This Blog” widget prominently displayed high on your side panel, so we can all subscribe and then be notified whenever you post. That’s my top tip to everyone.

As a general housekeeping note, please be on the lookout for our annual MLB.com Blogs Top 100 rankings roughly around Jan. 6, give or take a couple of days. As usual, it will be accompanied with a handy-dandy badge like the one you see in the side panel of this blog, so anyone who makes the list can proudly show off their accomplishment. We will rank in a variety of categories as always. I will pull our Omniture page-view data from Jan. 1 to Dec. 31, and once we’re back to work we’ll start compiling the lists. Be sure you enter your email to follow this blog on the right so you will see that post immediately!

HOLIDAY FARE

Enjoy these posts below while you warm by the yuletide log…and Happy Holidays again! – Mark

http://groundskeeper.mlblogs.com/2013/12/21/a-christmas-groundskeeper-story/

http://ramsey.mlblogs.com/2013/12/20/day-four-of-the-umpteen-days-of-christmas/

http://dicomo.mlblogs.com/2013/12/17/the-mets-and-the-curse-of-kris-kringle-2013-edition/

http://philliesinsider.mlblogs.com/2013/12/17/holiday-batting-lineup/

http://brewers.mlblogs.com/2013/12/13/the-womans-guide-to-choosing-the-perfect-holiday-gift/

http://phillies.mlblogs.com/2013/12/13/your-true-love-gave-you-what-now/

http://curlyw.mlblogs.com/2013/12/10/adam-laroche-checks-in-from-2013-chairman-uso-holiday-tour/

http://tribevibe.mlblogs.com/2013/12/13/favorite-holiday-treats-from-the-tribe/

Dodgers Kids’ Holiday Party – 12/11