From us to you, Merry Christmas

We have the world’s most famous astronaut Commander Chris Hadfield penning a piece about spending Christmas in space – being the star that shines 250 miles above Bethlehem.

We have Heidi Thomas, creator of TV behemoth Call The Midwife, delivering some tough talking on the state of the NHS.

We have veteran funnyman Barry Cryer backing our Caring At Christmas campaign, encouraging everybody to reach out and help the lonely.

We reveal The Big Issue Book of the year – and call on a fantastic panel including Frankie Boyle, Amy Sackville, Rupert Thomson and Simon Garfield to reveal their reads of 2013.

We have Mary Berry wading into the goose or turkey debate; the Fonz is in there too, talking about what Christmas means to him (and you’ll also find Leona Lewis, Sophie Ellis Bextor and Matthew Morrison from Glee).

We have Jennifer Saunders with a funny and frank Letter To My Younger Self, and Harry Hill on the TV show that came along this year and rendered the magnificent TV Burp redundant.

And we have John Bird’s chest-out, proud, must-read Christmas message. That’s just for starters.

At heart of this magazine you’ll find our vendors – a look at their great moments this year, a look at some stories of them moving on, a piece on the realities they face every day on the streets. And this brings us to the cover.

How do you follow a wonderful image, created by a seven-year-old boy, of a reindeer with hands for antlers holding The Big Issue? You decide to get several hundred photos of the vendors and ask your art director to put them together as one image of Santa that looks properly like Santa.

After he stops weeping, he then finds a creative powerhouse called Charis Tsevis to weave some digital mosaic magic and we have a cover that will make you want to stand up and applaud.

This year we’ve clanged with a call to the nation to ‘celebrate your vendor’. It’s been tough for the men and women who stand out there on the streets of Britain every day, but stand out there they do. So this cover is for them and it’s for all our readers who find something they love in the magazine every week.

Go find this one. Celebrate that cover and celebrate your vendor.

If you’d like to subscribe to The Big Issue, or if you wish to buy a copy but can’t locate a vendor, email robert.white@bigissue.com