Gnome Stew is taking a Christmas break, but we won’t be leaving you high and dry with no GMing material to read over your holidays.

We’re going to blow out the fire under the stewpot and serve up five articles highlighting our favorite Gnome Stew articles from 2009, with six blasts from the past featured each day.

We did this last year, and readers said that they enjoyed catching up on content they’d missed. The gang wrote an astounding 260+ articles in 2008, and has written more than 300 this year — it’s easy to miss a few!

That’ll start on December 24th, with two articles from Patrick interspersed, and the Stew will return to normal posting on January 4th. (2010! Where’s my damned hovercar?!)

Meet the Gnomes at Christmas

Today, though, we thought we’d continue another Gnome Stew holiday tradition: all of us gnomes in holiday mode! This blog is a very personal endeavor for us — we’re passionate about GMing, writing, sharing what we know with you, and learning from our insanely insightful readers — and we want you to know who’s behind the GMing articles you read here.

For the rest of the month, you can picture us just like this, only more drunk (even the kids — baby gnomes can really hold their liquor). Oh! And speaking of kids: two gnome babies were born this year, Stephen Ciechanowski and Lark Ralya. You’ll see them, too.

Here’s Patrick and his favorite gnome, Liam.

Alysia, our daughter Lark — one of 2009’s gnome babies — and our beagle mutt. Plus the dork with the mustache (moi!).

Phil is actually a lizard, except for his head — this is how he looks all year.

Kurt “tenderizing the latest gnome.”

I think Matt managed to accurately sum up the Stew quite well here: Christmas tree, gaming books, gnome, puppy.

Scott, our resident monkey-lover.

Troy, the most Christmas-y gnome, lurks behind his tree.

Walt claims to be a Luddite who needs a new camera, hence his inability to provide a Christmas picture, yet he manages to write articles here? Fishy indeed! He makes up for it with our second 2009 gnome baby, Stephen.

John said, and I quote, “This is about as christmasy as I usually get.”

So there you have it: the creative team behind Gnome Stew. Now where’s the spiked eggnog?

Merry Christmas!