Neil Gaiman’s Nicholas Was… in Animated Form

39 Degrees North: Christmas Card 2010 from 39 Degrees North on Vimeo.

Feeling a little overwhelmed by the cheer associated with a particular holiday, of which you may or may not even be participating?  We invite you to have a chill up your spine, courtesy of 39 Degrees North‘s Christmas “card” offering, based on Neil Gaiman‘s own once surreal Christmas greeting.

Neil Gaiman himself, on Nicholas Was…, from Smoke and Mirrors:

Every Christmas I get cards form artists.  They paint them themselves or draw them.  They are things of beauty, monuments to inspired creativity.

Every Christmas I feel insignificant and embarrassed and talentless.

So I wrote this one year, wrote it early for Christmas.  Dave McKean calligraphed it elegantly and I sent it out to everyone I could think of.  My card…

I keep meaning to do another Christmas card story, but it’s always December 15 before I remember, so I put it off until next year.

(via Neil Gaiman’s Journal.)