Happy Leon Day! It is officially six months until Christmas and the North Pole is ready to celebrate by kicking off Christmas in July this week.

Yes, it feels a bit silly to celebrate Christmas in July in June but this is the North Pole and we’re crazy sometimes.

It begins today – the 24th – a day we call Leon Day. Actually, tomorrow the 25th is Leon Day, too. I told you we were crazy!

Anyway, a new tradition kicks off tomorrow with the Parade of Fools. Grand Master of the Parade has been named and it is Elf Crash Murphy. Crash leads off the day of doing things backwards by leading all elves who want to participate in dressing backwards and walking backwards in the Parade of Fools.

The North Pole High School Band is rumored to be practicing playing “Bingle Jells” for the parade. We’ll see.

Why all this backwards stuff?

Well, that’s actually an old North Pole tradition of Leon Day. Leon is Noel, spelled backwards. At the halfway point to Christmas, everything is backwards! On this day many talk backwards, dress backwards and even eat backwards (dessert first!).

It’s a silly day, but a fun one. And a good way to begin Christmas in July.

Christmas in July is kind our of summer festival here at the North Pole. There are lots of hot dogs and dunking booths and water balloon fights – even though it is still quite cold here.

But it’s not all play. Serious things happen too. We will be holding meetings about a ton of stuff. How toy making is going, the preparation of Santa’s workshop, flight plans for Santa’s sleigh, etc.

There will be some work things going on in July as well for trackers who track Santa for Santa. You can follow along with that stuff at SantaTrackers.net.

So hang around! Christmas is happening NOW.