New holiday iGoogle theme on the way

At least some people were given a sneak peek of a new iGoogle theme that will be seen on personalized homepages soon. There is no information yet about how to get it installed on your own page, but here is a screenshot (taken by Brinke Guthrie from the Google Blogoscoped forum) that shows it in action.

Brinke posted about the new "Holiday Village" theme last night, but before we could get more information it disappeared -- leaving the raging masses wonder where it went and when it will be back. There was also a separate sighting reported on the official Google Web Search group -- the poster asks:

Last night I noticed the Christmas theme and added it to my page, but I get on this morning and it has disappeared. What happened?

After doing a lot of digging, I uncovered a Picasa Web Album with each of the images that make up the theme -- including the hidden "pi" image which shows the northern lights in the sky as seen here:

I am thinking iGoogle themes may be the future of doodles -- for important events, modified logos just don't cut it anymore.