It's time to start planning for Buck-a-Hit Day, our annual holiday gift-giving blowout on this blog. This will be our eighth year of doing this: We'll give a hard-earned dollar to charity for everyone who visits here next Thursday, December 16, up to $1,200, which is the Bogdanski family contribution this year. All you have to do is show up to view this blog, and charity gets a buck.

We'll also be passing the cyber-hat and ask readers to donate as well as visit. With any luck, our benefactors who have challenged readers in past years will return to up the Buck-a-Hit limit and match reader contributions. (You folks know who you are; please drop me a line as soon as possible if you can return in that role! New benefactors are also welcome.)

We're still working on some of the other details of the day. We have as a custom a comment contest, in which the reader who leaves the best comment relating to the season (chosen by reader vote) gets to steer part of the contributions to a charity of his or her choice. We're planning to keep that going. Readers with other ideas of how to spice up the day should sound off in the comments on this post.

Last year we raised $8,801 on Buck-a-Hit Day, which was down a bit from the year before but a nice performance nonetheless. Even if you're too broke to donate, all you have to do to participate is show up here again next Thursday, as early in the day as you can make it. Just by visiting this site, you'll separate me from a dollar and send it to a good cause.