It happens every year. Not always on the 25th--some years they have arrived on the 5th of January, or the 7th of December. Sometimes they're wrapped in newspaper, sometimes in slick, shiny purple paper with shifting snowflakes in silver, and one year apparently all the owls were taken because they were delivered by a rather harried group of mallard ducks. This year, there are no ducks, just an absurd amount of postage from a myriad of strange countries and, as always, no note.