To say that the response to the 2008 Yule and Christmas Beer Blog Photo Contest and Pageant... I did mention the pantomime pageant, did I?... has been far greater than expected would be the understatement of the year. We just created another photo set on Flickr for entries submitted between 28 November and half of the entries on 2 December and that adds another 119 photos to the 118 on the first Flickr photo set. 237 pictures to 2 December and we still have four days of entries to catch up. That is crazy...but not if you consider the fabulous prizes that are being pledged by these great sponsors:

• Beer-Ritz, Britain's bestest online beer retailer;
• BrewDog Beer of Scotland;
• Flying Dog Brewery of Maryland;
• Beau's All-Natural Brewing of easternest Ontario;
• Shipyard Brewing of Portland, Maine;
• Church-key Brewing of Campbellford, Ontario;
• Roland + Russell, Canada's nicest beer importers;
• Jolly Pumpkin of Dexter, Michigan USA;
• Flossmoor Station Brewing, of Illinois;
• Widmer Brothers of Portland, Oregon;
• Cracked Kettle beer store in Amsterdam, The Netherlands;
• Laurelwood Brewing Company, of Oregon;
• New Holland Brewing of Michigan;
• Maureen Ogle, author of "Ambitious Brew";
• TAPS, Canada's beer magazine;

• Cigar City Brewing of Tampa Bay FLA;
• Hopworks Urban Brewery of Portland Oregon;
• Oskar Blues Brewery of Colorado;
• Dogfish Head Craft Brewery of Delaware;
• The Gunmakers Pub of London England;
• Roots Organic Brewing Company of Portland Oregon;
• The Granite Brewery and Restaurant of Toronto, Ontario;
• and last but not least All About Beer magazine...which has offered FIVE subscriptions as well as other goodies.

I am simply gobsmacked. That is crazy. Good crazy but crazy. I fully expect that I have missed a prize or two in all the flood of emails and we do have more photos to upload this weekend to create a third set of entries on Flickr...if not more. A big thanks to Troy Burtch of Great Canadian Pubs and Beer and Matt Wiater of portlandbeer.com who have joined in and helped beat the bushes for more and more prizes for all of you. Jeff and I ecstatic that this is taking off as it is. There is still time to enter, too. Email your photos of anything related to beer (as well as more pledges of prizes) to both me at beerblog@gmail.com and also Jeff at stonchblog@gmail.com.

Join in! As we say around here every Yuletide, get it on and bang that gong. Merry photo contest to you all!