{"id":34136,"date":"2024-08-05T22:30:25","date_gmt":"2024-08-06T04:30:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/?p=34136"},"modified":"2024-08-12T11:23:02","modified_gmt":"2024-08-12T17:23:02","slug":"celebrating-20-years-of-the-merry-forums","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/celebrating-20-years-of-the-merry-forums\/","title":{"rendered":"Celebrating 20 Years of the Merry Forums"},"content":{"rendered":"

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<\/a>.<\/p>\n

That’s 20 years of Christmas<\/a> Card and Ornament Exchanges, 20 continuous years of tracking Santa<\/a> together, 20 straight years of celebrating Christmas<\/a> as a community.<\/p>\n

What’s the life cycle of a forum?<\/p>\n

You know, we’ve never really thought about it.<\/p>\n

The Merry Forums<\/a> 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?<\/p>\n

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

\"MyMerryChristmas.com

This is what MyMerryChristmas.com looked like in 2004<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/div>\n

I can remember that my interactions with other Christmas<\/a> 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<\/a>.com – seemed to attract a lot of like minded folks and we met on those sites.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

And the same was true when the Merry Forums<\/a> were born in 2004.<\/p>\n

We didn’t know what we were doing. We just knew we wanted to do it.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

It immediately broke. It took me until October of 2004 to get it officially open.<\/p>\n

But once we were open we were off to the races. The community of Christmas<\/a> lovers came and it has continued to grow.<\/p>\n

In the time since we have refined, redesigned, and reorganized every time.<\/p>\n

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<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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

And we have seen season after season of miracles.<\/p>\n

Some years ago, thanks to an idea from the community at the Merry Forums<\/a>, we established Santa’s sleigh. The idea was for everyone to chip in a few bucks to help someone out at Christmas<\/a>. 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.<\/p>\n

Such is the power of Christmas<\/a> together online. It makes miracles.<\/p>\n

Those miracles have not been isolated to strangers. I personally have been a beneficiary many times.<\/p>\n

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<\/a> community online that we survived all that.<\/p>\n

But even still, I make my living today as a web developer. Can you believe that? <\/em><\/p>\n

Someone pays me to use skills I have learned over 33 years at MyMerryChristmas.com to build and run their websites.<\/p>\n

I never had any idea back then how much all this would mean to me at this time of my life.<\/p>\n

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

The secret, in my mind, is simple. It’s Christmas<\/a>.<\/p>\n

We might all come from different places and we definitely all think different things but on this one thing – Christmas<\/a> – we are one.<\/p>\n

We love<\/a> to celebrate Christmas<\/a> together. All year. Every day.<\/p>\n

So how do we celebrate 20 years of the Merry Forums<\/a> together?<\/p>\n

I’m not sure.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

None of this stuff happens because of me or any other one individual. Again, that’s the power of Christmas<\/a>. It brings people together.<\/p>\n

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

And yule love<\/a> it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":34140,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"Celebrating 20 Years of the Merry Forums | MyMerryChristmas.com","_seopress_titles_desc":"The Merry Forums is the largest Christmas community and, we think, likely one of the longest running. This year marks 20 years of the Merry Forums.","_seopress_robots_index":"","iawp_total_views":687,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34136","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-christmas-news","category-christmas-online"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34136","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34136"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34136\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34140"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}