My understanding is that if you have not previously signed up for Yuletide, you must be assigned a pinch hit, and commit to it, in order to be able to upload a story or treat. If there was any way to change that so people could catch the pinch hits as they pleased in order to write additional stories (not, of course, being the assigned one), and therefore also jump into yuletide madness, we might get more participants and also more stories.

I say this entirely understanding the massive weight on Elyn and Astolat's shoulders, especially with the switch over to AO3, and that it might not be feasable.