Celebrating 20 Years of the Merry Forums

As we have been wrapping up yet another site redesign and a series of upgrades at MyMerryChristmas.com it dawned on us that 2024 is a milestone year: this fall marks 20 years of the Merry Forums at MyMerryChristmas.com.

That’s 20 years of Christmas Card and Ornament Exchanges, 20 continuous years of tracking Santa together, 20 straight years of celebrating Christmas as a community.

What’s the life cycle of a forum?

You know, we’ve never really thought about it.

The Merry Forums were never a planned thing. There was no ambition behind it. That has to be meaningful. I mean, for something unplanned, unmonetized, unmanaged (if I’m being honest) it sure has lasted a long time. Am I the only one who sees it as an amazing thing?

MyMerryChristmas has existed since 1991 but it didn’t become a community with the Merry Forums until 2004. The Merry Forums began out of frustrations with finding a gathering place online. They just kept closing down.

This is what MyMerryChristmas.com looked like in 2004

I can remember that my interactions with other Christmas freaks online outside of our little website began around 1994. These were the days of Geocities and Yahoo groups. Then big name dotcoms – particularly Christmas.com – seemed to attract a lot of like minded folks and we met on those sites.

In those days I was a hack as a web developer. I was never schooled in any of this. Our first websites came about thanks to a borrowed book from the library when my sister was in college for graphic design. We didn’t know what we didn’t know when it came to running a website.

And the same was true when the Merry Forums were born in 2004.

We didn’t know what we were doing. We just knew we wanted to do it.

I can recall trying to make that leap. It actually started in 2003 when I downloaded a free forum script and started playing with it. I knew immediately I was in over my head. But I chipped away at my little test site for about six months before I finally thought I could actually pull it off. Then, targeting Memorial Day weekend of 2004, I set things up.

It immediately broke. It took me until October of 2004 to get it officially open.

But once we were open we were off to the races. The community of Christmas lovers came and it has continued to grow.

In the time since we have refined, redesigned, and reorganized every time.

We’ve made some mistakes. The cookbook we did was a project that didn’t pan out well. We had to learn how not to talk about the stuff that divides us — the usual, politics and religion — and just focus on Christmas.

We have tried, it seems, a thousand different ideas for community events. Some, like our Christmas Exchanges and Kringle Radio, have really worked out. Others not so much.

And we have seen season after season of miracles.

Some years ago, thanks to an idea from the community at the Merry Forums, we established Santa’s sleigh. The idea was for everyone to chip in a few bucks to help someone out at Christmas. We’ve continued that tradition and every year we get to give back together. It’s extraordinary that strangers who talk nearly every day but never actually get a chance to meet can do so much good for other strangers out there.

Such is the power of Christmas together online. It makes miracles.

Those miracles have not been isolated to strangers. I personally have been a beneficiary many times.

A few years ago, when Covid hit and I was suddenly out of work the prospect of having to shut down MyMerryChristmas.com was very real. It was only the generosity of some very faithful stalwarts of the Christmas community online that we survived all that.

But even still, I make my living today as a web developer. Can you believe that?

Someone pays me to use skills I have learned over 33 years at MyMerryChristmas.com to build and run their websites.

I never had any idea back then how much all this would mean to me at this time of my life.

My father, who was a supporter and a long-time observer of MyMerryChristmas.com, consistently marveled over the Christmas community at the Merry Forums. He never could understand how so many people could come together year after year to do all the things we do.

The secret, in my mind, is simple. It’s Christmas.

We might all come from different places and we definitely all think different things but on this one thing – Christmas – we are one.

We love to celebrate Christmas together. All year. Every day.

So how do we celebrate 20 years of the Merry Forums together?

I’m not sure.

But we’re not going to let a 20-year milestone go unnoticed. Right now we’re talking. Bouncing ideas off each other. Doing what we have always done.

None of this stuff happens because of me or any other one individual. Again, that’s the power of Christmas. It brings people together.

If you have not participated in the Merry Forums we invite you to come and join. It’s free. You will be welcomed and you will find friends. You will celebrate Christmas.

And yule love it.