Start the Magic

In 34 years ago, Judith Donath rocked the greeting card world.

Donath, a fellow at Harvard's Berkman Center, came up with the concept of the e-card and created The Electric Postcard site at MIT Media Lab.

Electric postcards, as they were first called, were pretty simple back then.

While the early cards could be customized with text and imagery, there was no animation effects, personalized ecard games attachments, or personalized video content that you see today.

The e-card caught on rapidly, with 1.7 million of them being sent instead of a traditional card in just one year after they debuted.

Video e-cards were introduced in the early 2000s and today you can integrate digital gift cards with your e-greeting.

Hallmark Cards, the world's largest greeting card manufacturer, debuted its first e-card on July 3, 2001.

The card was created by artists Bob Holt and Mike Adair for the 4th of July and featured a pink cat named Hoops and a green bunny named Yoyo, who became two of the first recurring e-card characters.

E-card technology has improved over the years and now they’re essentially short films.

An estimated 500 million e-cards are sent worldwide each year during the holidays. Americans send out roughly 2 billion cards at Christmas time.

Being a boomer, I dug my heels in on e-cards and refused to have anything to do with them for the longest time. I vowed to always send paper cards for the big occasions to show that I really cared.

I don’t do much decorating for the holidays, but each year I take my Christmas cards and insert them in the blinds on my living room window.

Tap the Clock

I have gradually come around to e-cards, though, and while I’ll always send the old school cards, I’m also deploying the digital variant.

This morning, I received a fabulous e-card from my cousin and her husband.

The receiver is greeted with an image of an old-time cuckoo clock and a message reading “Tap the Clock to Start the Magic.”

From there, we go to a small Alpine village where a robin descends from a church tower, touches a merry-go-round reindeer, who promptly comes to life.

The reindeer joins a crowd of people standing around a Christmas tree, which lights up as everyone starts singing “Oh, Christmas Tree.” The light keeps on spreading until the entire town is shining in the darkness.

I'm still amazed at how much I enjoyed this greeting. I've seen enough e-cards in my time, but something about this one really put me in the holiday spirit.

That robin, which has been associated with Christmas for many years, appears in the return card I sent to my cousin.

This one features a man hauling a Christmas tree on a wagon through a small town with his dog sitting next to him.

The light concept is employed here as well, as the town’s various homes and businesses come to life as the wagon passes by.

Saturday was the shortest day of the year, with the sun setting at 4:33 PM. It’s been very cold in New York for the last few days, so the themes of light and warmth are especially welcome.

Of course, all this traditional imagery was the result of digital technology that I don’t begin to understand, but it cheered me up, so I’m okay with it.

On Thursday, I was trying to do my regular meditation routine when I heard this strange ticking sound.

It wasn’t loud, but it was constant, and it was throwing off my quest for mindfulness.

Finally, I realized that the wind had gotten through a slight crack in the window and was rattling one of my Christmas cards.

This never would’ve happened with an e-card, I thought.

Merry Christmas.