It's the time of the year where we get ourselves ready for the festive season by creating Xmas wallpaper, screensavers and by downloading games with a Christmas theme. Although it's mild outside and doesn't feel like Christmas is just over a week away, there are many new Christmas-themed downloads made available this year.

We've got a couple of great screensavers. The Christmas 3D Screensaver is a well-designed shareware screensaver that will keep your fellow office workers entertained. The Crisp Christmas Screensaver is an extended version of the popular seasonal screensaver. We've also got a couple of decent seasonal games, with the Chicken Invaders 3 (Xmas Edition) and Pinch ol' Santa 2, which is a free seasonal game for Windows or Mac users.

The US National Archives have thoughtfully provided free high-res images of the Charters of Freedom documents, available for our inspection and enjoyment. However, don’t expect to be reading these with any comfort; early upkeep of the documents was very poor so you’re going to have to adjust the contrast settings to get the most out of them. Despite this, the images are of extremely high quality and will print to publication quality (300dpi), going up to approximately 24" wide by 29" high. Each file also contains “clipping paths” so graphic designers can easily create masks with professional image editing software. In any case, it’s not every day you can say you downloaded something that helped shaped the Western world. Oh, and feel free to forward these on to Mr. Bush if you get the chance.

Here.

Desktop Earth cleverly uses NASA's Blue Marble Next imagery to display an almost real-time image of the earth on your desktop. It comes in two versions; a “snapshot” option which you can download into your browser and set as your desktop image, and another which, once downloaded, will automatically update an accurate representation of the Earth on your desktop. Based on the Sun’s overhead position, the end result can only be likened to watching one big, global lava lamp, complete with changing colours and trippy moving shapes.

Get it here.

Desktop Earth - Gorgeous Wallpaper Generator [via Digg]

The BBC, in association with the Met Office, has launched a screensaver experiment that lets you observe changes in the climate, whilst helping top climate boffins predict future weather patterns. The experiment uses a technique known as “distributed computing”, which harnesses the spare CPU power of those who have download the program. This effectively creates one big, super computer, and the BBC calculates that only 10,000 users would be needed to exceed the world’s fastest processors. Once installed, the programme runs calculations in the background, sending the results back to scientists in Oxford, who then combine everyone’s results. It requires no action on the user’s part, and the results will be aired on BBC 4 in May.

Do your bit and download it here.

Getting excited about desktop wallpapers is a rare feeling, yet this free batch manages to give your desktop some real class. They are of high resolution which means reduced distortion, and come in the standard sizes of 800x600, 1024x768, 1280x1024 and 1600x1200, whilst the more technically evolved can benefit from a widescreen size of 1680x1050. New images are added on a daily basis; however you’ll have to start paying once you’ve exhausted the first free twenty. Available here.

Awesome High Resolution Wallpapers [Digg]