Christmas Puzzling
Here we are in December. Thanksgiving was a week ago, so the food has had a chance to settle and the leftovers are pretty much gone. In my home that means it’s time to haul the Christmas boxes out of storage, decorate the house, and set up a tree. Then, with all that done, it’s time to start my Christmas puzzles!
During the first 11 months of every year, I browse online to see what new Christmas puzzles are coming out. I don’t re-do puzzles, so I need a fresh cache for the holidays. Then, at the beginning of December, I push my puzzle table across the room (so our Christmas tree can have the featured spot) and I pull out my holiday puzzles from the closet. It’s time to get to work! Along with baking cookies, singing holiday songs, and seeing the smiles on everyone’s faces, Christmas puzzling is one of my favorite holiday traditions!
To kick things off this year, I started early with an outdoor scene from Vermont Christmas Company. This is their 1000 piece “Camping for Christmas,” a look at people enjoying a holiday retreat in the wilderness. The difficulty level was what I consider standard for a puzzle this size, with no large expanses of a single color, and no crazy designs to distract your eyes. This is also available as an Advent Calendar puzzle, if you’d like to try it that way.
That was my “cheat” puzzle, done in November. The rest won’t be underway until later this week, but I can share a couple of them with you in advance. There are six more to be completed before the 25th, so two each week should just about cover it.
First off the pile will be one I picked out while doing a feature on Piatnik, a manufacturer I hadn’t tried before this year. While looking through their catalog, the pure wackiness of this puzzle spoke to the wackiness in my brain and compelled me to put it in my cart. This is “Christmas Jet,” a jumbled mass of reindeer, elves, and toys surrounding Santa as he jets his way to work. I’m looking forward to this one, for sure.
Following the Piatnik, I plan to tackle one from eeBoo, whose tagline of “Woman Owned & Mother Run” keeps me coming back to support them. Well, it’s not just that… it’s also their commitment to using recycled materials when possible, and the beautiful puzzles they make. For example, this item from their Christmas collection. It’s 500 pieces and is titled “Ms. Santa’s Reindeer.” When you click the link, be sure to read the blurb, “About the artist.” She talks to cows? I had to pick this puzzle.
To finish up today, I’m circling back to where I started and sharing another puzzle from Vermont Christmas Company. I’m a sucker for nature scenes and animals, so this absolutely gorgeous image pretty much threw itself into my “must have” pile. This 550 piece picture of Santa reading his favorite story to all his animal friends is called “Santa’s Forest.”
There are three more puzzles in my Christmas pile for 2024, and I hope I have time to get to them all. Then I can start collecting new ones for my holiday puzzling in 2025!
Happy Holidays, and Happy Puzzling.
Phil (aka Puzzle Buster)
I love the Christmas puzzles
