Some of you have questions about our first annual Christmas Carol Contest. Fair enough: I’ve never sponsored one of these before, there were bound to be a few bugs in the system.

The first few leaders were: Mary, Did You Know?, Nov. 23, 16 views; then Away in a Manger, Nov. 25, with 17; What Child Is This?, Nov. 27, 22 views; and on Dec. 3, O Holy Night, still in the lead with 25 views. If the contest were to end today , O Holy Night would be the winner.

My idea was to generate excitement by making it possible for the lead to change hands very often. But that hasn’t happened since Dec. 3.

Two points to remember:

You can request any hymn, even one that’s already been entered by someone else. We’re not going to run out of Christmas music. Or you can ask for the same hymn by a different artist.

However, your request can’t win the contest (although it does win in other ways, just by being there: the business at hand is to proclaim the birth of Christ) unless a lot of readers view it on the day it was posted. I’m going with the assumption that you want to hear these songs no matter who winds up winning.

We still have 12 days to go, plenty of time for anyone’s candidate to get a lot of views.

And if you already have all the Bell Mountain books published so far, your prize will be the next book, No. 11, The Temptation, when it becomes available.

Please feel free to ask any questions you might have. Think of it as a way of training me how to administer a contest.