Christmas On The Web

A lot of my favourite memories growing up on the internet were boosted by the extra charm and flair you would get on a lot of websites around Christmas time. Animated snowflakes or Christmas lights added to your usual sites, additional (jingle) bells and whistles and the odd bonus festive themed flash game were all staples of my favourite websites in December.

While on the surface it seems to me like festive charm isn't as present on the web these days, I did have to ask if that's just because I don't go to sites for kids anymore. I wouldn't be against sites like YouTube, Instagram or even SpaceHey having a little bit of festive flair but I don't recall that being a thing in the past either. But I needed to remember and check out sites I used to visit and check out what they're doing this holiday season. So I went on a bit of a snowy walk down memory lane.

First up was Newgrounds, not a site I visited that much when I was younger but one I felt the need to check in on. It does indeed have a bit of Christmas cheer. Nothing crazy but there are Santa hats about and it's worth checking out. Newgrounds festive aura is really mostly built on the community as you might expect. 

The next site I thought of was one I racked up a lot of frequent flyer miles for: nick.com. This was my first disappointment. I had a lot of festive fun here as a kid but the youth of today won't enjoy that same fun. Nick's website has done literally nothing for Christmas which is honestly just a bummer. Back in the good ol' days they went all out with everything I mentioned at the start of the blog and even had an advent calendar prize draw! (Screen grabbed from 2012, check out the current site if you dare)

That inspired me to check out Cartoon Network's website which fared slightly better. It did have a small selection of Xmas games tucked away but there was still no visual creative flair like I was hoping for. Hey, it's an improvement and hopefully it only gets better.

Animal Jam seems to require a download to play these days and I didn't really want to get into all of that to play an online educational community game for children. I feel like at 21 years old that would be... quite weird. On the surface however, the site seems to be spruced up and jolly, which is great to see. I had a great time playing wintery Animal Jam and I hope there's plenty of young 'uns out there having the same fun right now.

Another site I decided to check out was the Harry Potter website, which I certainly don't recommend supporting with your money but is worth a look at. It's more Christmassy than others, with a variety of festive articles, quizzes and the like, but I must say the entire website really just doesn't compare to the beautifully crafted old Pottermore website that I once spent so much time on. Those illustrations, if you haven't seen them, are a real thing of beauty, and plenty of them evoke the exact warm Christmas vibe I've been getting at. Works like below from Charlie Bowater were lowkey a formative part of my childhood. Gorgeous.

I don't recall the base Facebook site ever putting up the decorations this time of year but they used to have a hell of a lot of games. Which is actually a topic I'd like to dive into soon. These simple time waster games were rarely anything fancy but plenty of them had charm, and I feel like most of them really pulled out all the stops at Christmas time. Zynga were a particularly big fish in this pond at the time and they had plenty of limited time events and festive treasures across their games. There really is something about these, even though it's simple enough that I just find so whimsical and delightful to see. Facebook games as a whole really don't seem to be a thing anymore, which is a bit of a shame.

So look, I'm well aware that my perception of if websites used to put more effort in for seasonal occasions is probably warped by my younger mind at the time, but there does seem to have been at least a bit more effort back then. Another huge miss now is the death of flash. A lot of games and sites that we'd look back fondly to are dead a while now. Plenty of these had a great Christmas buzz, Club Penguin was special any time of year but it was extra cosy in winter. So maybe we aren't missing out on a whole lot, and maybe kids aren't interested in these things when they have TikToks and other forms of rapid entertainment. However I still think it's nice to decorate the house for Christmas. Even with those wonderful childhood illusions shattered, decorating for Christmas makes me feel a lot better about the world, it makes the house feel more lived in. Decorating the web for Christmas? Well that would make it feel more lived in as well, as it should be. Instead of full of corporate greed, a vacuum of capitalist ugliness, bots, and political nutters, the web should be decorated with tinsel and colourful lights that compliment the crackling fire and brings us all together to relax and enjoy the community as the year comes to a close.

Thanks for reading all of this if you have, you're a trooper. Please tell me all about your favourite seasonal web content here or in IMs. Merry Christmas ~Ian