Christmas is coming the goose is getting fat… This year we’re not doing that.

After long, sober, consideration we have decided to end the “Christmas is coming…. ” project.

Simply put, in the wake of last years “Christmas is coming the goose is getting fat… if Verner Panton had ever visited us, that is where he would have sat” we couldn’t see where to take the concept.

We had reached a creative zenith. Mount Olympus was behind us, a distant speck on a snowy, cloudy horizon and ahead a sorry, meaningless, desert of repetition, emotional contortion and former East German TV stars who couldn’t hack it in the west and are now paid to churn out the same rubbish week in week out on MDR.

Sure civilization will invariably develop to allow further evolution of rhyme, thus allowing someone to take up the mantle we have cast asunder. Despite all his anger at the irony of existence a Shakespeare could never have written “Cos when you’re laid in bed at night, watching roaches climb the wall, if you call your Dad he could stop it all.” Nor with all his understanding of melancholic beauty could a van Gogh have painted a masked rioter throwing a bunch of flowers.

Such is a gift of evolution.

But we know from your letter and email just how popular our Christmas gift idea feature is. How unique it is. How you appreciate our bravery in tackling such a taboo.

And so this year we’re reviving a classic of Victorian drama – The Advent Calendar.

The Advent Calendar with the chance to win things.

Over at pinterest.com we have started a Design Advent Calendar Board and every day will open a window on a design object. A design object presented by the amiable Christmas Gnome Napoleon from the House of Kartell.

And from time to time will run a small competition offering you the chance to win one or the other object.

To be in with chance of winning simply keep an eye on www.facebook.com/smowcom We will publish all details of what can be won and how there.

Or follow us at pinterest.com/smowblog. Then you’ll miss nothing.

One last time, altogether now: "What will you be unwrapping this year?"