What Is the T-mas Tradition on Brandon Bird's Website?

Updated

T-mas is Brandon Bird's annual holiday card tradition, posted each November on brandonbird.com. Rather than a single recurring design, each year brings a new card, sometimes drawn by a guest artist. The posts themselves are brief announcements — usually just a line or two plus the artwork — so the tradition is best understood as a yearly creative drop rather than a shop or subscription.

How the tradition works

The pattern is simple and consistent: a November post announces that year's card. From the site's archive:

  • 2022 — "Snow Foolin': This year's T-mas card is here!" (November 21, 2022)
  • 2021 — "Painting the Fool: The long T-mas tradition continues, this time with a card by John Larriva inspired by Leyendecker's T-mas covers for the Saturday Evening Post." (October 26, 2021)
  • 2023 — "Mr. Tweet: Once again, the T-mas season is upon us!" (November 22, 2023)

Two things stand out. First, the timing drifts — late October in 2021, late November in 2022 and 2023 — so there's no fixed release date to rely on. Second, the 2021 post explicitly calls it "the long T-mas tradition," confirming it predates the years shown in the visible archive.

Guest artists and outside references

T-mas isn't always Bird's own drawing. The 2021 card was made by John Larriva, working from J.C. Leyendecker's holiday covers for the Saturday Evening Post — a deliberate nod to early-20th-century American illustration. That post is the clearest example of how the tradition borrows from art history rather than staying inside Bird's usual pop-culture register.

How T-mas relates to Bird's other holiday work

T-mas is separate from his Valentine's output, which follows its own schedule. In February 2023 he released V-Book, a 24-page downloadable and printable e-book of Valentine cards and activities (15 black-and-white, 9 color) for $8, including the SVU Valentines and a buildable Hannibal. That's a paid product; the T-mas posts, by contrast, are announcements on the blog.

How to find the cards

The cards live in the site's dated archive, which runs from 2013 through 2023 and is browsable by year and month. To see a given year's card:

  1. Go to the archive section of brandonbird.com.
  2. Pick the relevant year (T-mas posts cluster in October–November).
  3. Open the post — the announcement text is short, and the card is the main content.

The archive also includes an "Older" link at the end, suggesting earlier entries exist beyond what's listed.

What the site does not tell you

The visible page evidence doesn't state whether T-mas cards are sold, mailed, or offered as free downloads. The 2023 V-Book post mentions that people sometimes ask him to express-mail Valentine cards, which is why he made a printable alternative — but no equivalent shipping or pricing detail appears for T-mas. If you want a physical card, the archive post is the starting point, not a confirmed order page.