Digital Christmas Past

In the classic 1989 movie, Christmas Vacation, there is a touching scene where Clark Griswold spends an afternoon locked in his attic. He bundles up in some old clothes, discovers some old hidden Christmas presents, and get misty with nostalgia watching old holiday movies.

I’ve recently moved my online abode from one web host to another. The task involved taking some time to backup and transfer files from one to the other, and that brought about some fun discoveries in a digital analogy to Clark’s experience in his attic.

Way back in the year 2000, we took our annual family Christmas letter digital. No longer would we stuff, lick, label and stamp envelopes as we had for years. In the new millennium, our holiday wishes could travel the digital tubes of the net (Yes, there are some offliners to whom we will always have to send a hard copy letter, but they miss out on all the fun links).

Typically, in addition to sending our Christmas letter by email, I also post it to the web for easy sharing with afterthoughts or others who missed out on the email. For that first letter in 2000, we produced the below video (and made it available in high and low bandwidth versions in Quicktime AND RealPlayer!). And for any who care to dig deep into the Casey Family digital Christmas Letter archive, I say, “Get a life, and enjoy!” Here they are: 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 and 2007.

Stay tuned for this year’s letter coming soon!