Games are what bring us together, and the holidays are what hopefully give us a nice end and new start to the year. Here at Shacknews, we too wish to acknowledge the festive gaiety of the season with a whole slew of prizes and a contest worthy of your time. We're asking you to recreate your favorite scene from a game and to give it a holiday theme. Interpret this directive as objectively or abstractly as you like, but humor, cleverness and skill should be the key ingredients of your entry.

We're going to give you a full week for this contest, accepting entries until December 26th at 11:59 CST, giving people that day after Christmas to submit a decent entry. Why so much time, you ask? Well I think we expect some pretty great entries since the first prize for this contest will be an Xbox 360 Elite edition game system.

Intimidated by the notion of making something? You shouldn't be, because just submitting something will enter you in our game sweepstakes. For this, we have a wide array of prizes such as Call of Duty 4: Modern Combat (PS3 and PC), the collectors edition of Quake Wars: Enemy Territory (PC), Tony Hawk's Proving Ground (Wii), Bee Movie: The Game (Wii), Spiderman: Friend or Foe (PC and PSP), a signed Team Fortress 2 poster, Castlevania: The Dracula X Chronicles (PSP), Silent Hill Origins (PSP), Coded Arms: Contagion (PSP), Metal Gear Solid Digital Graphic Novel (PSP), The Witcher (PC), TotalGaming.net memberships with tokens for Galactic Civilizations 2 (PC) and Sins of a Solar Empire (PC), Oblivion: Game of the Year Edition (360, PS3), Shadowrun (360), Mass Effect (360), the collectors edition of Prey (360) with a custom Prey 360 faceplate and mousepad, a plethora of t-shirts, an ultimate mystery Bag of (gaming) Crap and more just for submitting an entry, courtesy of Activision, Konami, Valve, Microsoft, Stardock, Atari, Bethesda Software, 3DRealms and Shacknews.

When submitting, post your entry in the comments to this article and please indicate if you own a PC, Xbox 360, Wii, PS3 or PSP. If you need tools, check out Splashup or Paint.net and image hosting can be found at EasyScreens, Photobucket and ImageShack. As many submissions can be made as you like, but quality will always win out over quantity. Worldwide entries will be accepted, however only North American residents are eligible for the Xbox 360.