syslog best practices -- when to call closelog?

[J Rice]

I have a question:

When should syslog.closelog() be called?  I have a daemon that spends
most of its time asleep and quiet, but writes messages to the mail log
when active.  Should I open the log at the start and keep it open until
the program closes?  This seems much simpler than issuing three
commands everytime I want to write to the log.

The program will essentially be running constantly.  Is having the log
constantly "open" a problem?  What happens if the program crashes or is
killed without a closelog()?  

Jeff