Open Post: Merry Christmas from the team at Mamamia.

Welcome to Open Post; a tradition that’s almost as old as Mamamia itself. It’s where we come together each week to share a little of what’s been happening in our lives.

We kick the conversation off by having one of the  Editorial Team tell you what’s on their mind at that particular moment.

But this time? I’m going to hijack Open Post and use it for something else. I’d like to say thank you.

Thank you to the new readers, who’ve stumbled across this website in amongst the trillions on the internet and decided to stick around at our dinner party.

Thank you to those of you who read us on the bus or the train and check in for your morning news or to fill a bored moment. Thank you to the people who comment, and also to the ones who choose not to comment but lurk instead (all power to the lurkers – we know you’re there).

Thank you to those of you who sneakily read the website when you should be working, who are reading us on your mobile before you go to bed at night, or scrolling stories on your iPad when watching the kids play at the park. Thank you to those who have shared stories on Facebook that made you laugh, made you cry or made you stand up for what you believe in.

Thank you to those of you who have been with us since the beginning and have stayed loyal through all the changes we’ve had.

It’s been a damn big year for Mamamia. We have now well and truly made the transition from a blog to a full blown women’s opinion website.

We have published more than 11,000 posts and are reaching around 2 million people across our network every single month. That’s pretty exciting and an amazing achievement by our team.

So which stories have been the most popular this year? What did you read and share more than anything else?

Well. A lot.

We’ve brought you devastating stories of mother’s discovering girls as young as seven were on ‘diyets’.  We’ve laughed until we wet ourselves watching men experiencing the pain of child birth.

We told Kochie where to go when it came to his 1950s breastfeeding attitudes and we read in horror, the truth about a rape in Steubenville.

We refused to stand idly by when racism took place in our community and we told John Laws it was absurd to claim a six-year-old could be ‘provocative’.

We brought you the world exclusive of this moving Dove advertisement and watched you share these before and after photoshop images of celebrities, thousands and thousands of times.

The incomparable Charlie Pickering told you that as a white man, he knew nothing about racism in Australia and we were moved to tears by Shelly Argent’s declaration that she was the mother of one equal and one unequal son. Thousands of you signed our vaccination pledge, which captured the attention of then Health Minister Tanya Plibersek. And we all agreed that as women? It’s not about the nail.

We talked about what makes a good mother and that some acts are so evil, so as to mean you forfeit your right to parent forever. This post from site coordinator Nat Hawk went viral after being retweeted by NASA and became our most read post of all time (it’s about astronauts!) And the accident that befell this writer’s husband gave everyone who read it a lump in their throat.

We agreed that this was the most vile use of a child in political advertising we’d ever seen and re-wrote a very rude woman’s letter to her next door neighbour about her autistic son. We shared photos of 17 unretouched labia and everyone collectively lost their shit about the Offspring finale.

The lady who knitted with wool from inside her vagina left us all with quizzical looks on our faces and Taryn Brumfitt’s post about her body changing after pregnancy had us fist pumping like we were at a Bon Jovi concert.

The whole country became obsessed with Rose Waterland’s hilarious Bachelor re-caps, which ended up being more famous than the show itself.

You showed the Government your disgust when child care workers’ had their pay rises cancelled and you agreed with Em Rusciano that everyone needs to back the hell off mums. We’re all doing our best.

Together we toasted the contribution of our nation’s first female prime minister, applauded Angelina Jolie for her bravery and mourned the loss of Nelson Mandela.

2013 has been a very, very, very big year. So as well as you wonderful readers, I’d like to take a few paragraphs to thank all the people who make Mamamia happen behind the scenes.

Our stellar advertising team, the writers at our sister-site iVillage, our hundreds of freelance contributors, our always enthusiastic interns (many of whom are now staff), our technology gurus who iron out the kinks and the marketing people who make sure you know about us.

Congratulations to my bloody brilliant Editorial Team. I couldn’t have asked for a more dedicated, insightful and intelligent group of women to work with. I am going to name names – the team is made up of Lucy Ormonde, Kate Pasterfield, Nicky Champ, Natalia Hawk, Melissa Wellham, Mary Ward, Em Rusciano, Elissa Ratliff, Kate Hunter, Bern Morley, Shauna Anderson, Rosie Waterland and Rebecca Sparrow.

And thank you of course to the founder of Mamamia, Mia Freedman who makes this website so very special and is a phenomenal mentor, writer, speaker, businesswoman, and all around amazing lady.

There is no rest for the wicked, at least not for those who write on the internet. So we’ll be bringing you reduced, but still awesome content every single day of the holiday season. Please bear with us if your comments take a little longer than usual to be processed. We’ll be doing our best with a much smaller team than usual.

For those who celebrate, have a very merry Christmas. To those who don’t have a restful and joyful festive season and all the best to our readers for 2014.

We’ll see you next year!

Jamila – Editor.