Takoyaki Tech // Shutterstock

For as long as we’ve had the internet, we’ve been using it to celebrate the holidays.

If you’re an elder millennial or Gen Xer, you probably still remember the early rituals well: sending laughably pixelated e-cards, posting seasonal greetings on message boards, rushing home to change your AIM font to holiday colors after school. Perhaps you painstakingly decorated your GeoCities page with HTML snowfall and a looping MIDI soundtrack of “Carol of the Bells.” Or maybe you’re a Gen Z digital native who grew up on a diet of YouTube Christmas concerts and Elf Yourself videos. Born squarely in the online era, you’ve never known a holiday season that wasn’t celebrated, in one way or another, on a device.

Over the years, we’ve watched the internet evolve from clunky and dorky to delightful and, well, everywhere. Today, online holiday shopping generates $282 billion in the U.S. and $1.2 trillion globally, according to Salesforce data. In 2024 alone, $229 billion of that online holiday commerce was influenced by AI tools and recommendation engines, which shows just how ingrained digital behavior is in how we celebrate. 

However distorted those primitive graphics look to us now, the internet’s onset undoubtedly marked something huge. It was the first time people could share holiday moments with loved ones without being in the same room, or even online at the same time. And as the web matured, our digital holiday habits leveled up with it. Suddenly, December wasn’t about waiting for someone to check their email, but rather experiencing real-time festivities in virtual spaces. Livestreamed concerts replaced those tinny MIDI files, synchronous group video chats took over from digital greeting cards, and people began connecting across states, countries and time zones.

To understand how we got from e-cards and decked-out webpages to the way we now use the web to orchestrate real-time virtual celebrations, Decentraland dug into three decades of internet archives from cultural sources like Reddit, The Atlantic, ABC News, Smithsonian Magazine and more. 

The timeline that emerges is oddly tender, unexpectedly funny and instantly nostalgic to anyone who’s grown up alongside the net.

1990s: Message boards, e-cards, and early online shopping

Message boards and forums

In the early 1990s (and even late 1980s), the holiday season started seeping onto the web through message boards and text archive files. Sites like Textfiles.com now preserve folders of seasonal poems, jokes, and parodies, hosted in a folder called “Holiday Textfiles.” These pieces come from the wider bulletin board system (BBS) and early message-board culture, where people shared text files digitally long before the modern web. Both were precurs

Takoyaki Tech // Shutterstock

For as long as we’ve had the internet, we’ve been using it to celebrate the holidays.

If you’re an elder millennial or Gen Xer, you probably still remember the early rituals well: sending laughably pixelated e-cards, posting seasonal greetings on message boards, rushing home to change your AIM font to holiday colors after school. Perhaps you painstakingly decorated your GeoCities page with HTML snowfall and a looping MIDI soundtrack of “Carol of the Bells.” Or maybe you’re a Gen Z digital native who grew up on a diet of YouTube Christmas concerts and Elf Yourself videos. Born squarely in the online era, you’ve never known a holiday season that wasn’t celebrated, in one way or another, on a device.

Over the years, we’ve watched the internet evolve from clunky and dorky to delightful and, well, everywhere. Today, online holiday shopping generates $282 billion in the U.S. and $1.2 trillion globally, according to Salesforce data. In 2024 alone, $229 billion of that online holiday commerce was influenced by AI tools and recommendation engines, which shows just how ingrained digital behavior is in how we celebrate. 

However distorted those primitive graphics look to us now, the internet’s onset undoubtedly marked something huge. It was the first time people could share holiday moments with loved ones without being in the same room, or even online at the same time. And as the web matured, our digital holiday habits leveled up with it. Suddenly, December wasn’t about waiting for someone to check their email, but rather experiencing real-time festivities in virtual spaces. Livestreamed concerts replaced those tinny MIDI files, synchronous group video chats took over from digital greeting cards, and people began connecting across states, countries and time zones.

To understand how we got from e-cards and decked-out webpages to the way we now use the web to orchestrate real-time virtual celebrations, Decentraland dug into three decades of internet archives from cultural sources like Reddit, The Atlantic, ABC News, Smithsonian Magazine and more. 

The timeline that emerges is oddly tender, unexpectedly funny and instantly nostalgic to anyone who’s grown up alongside the net.

1990s: Message boards, e-cards, and early online shopping

Message boards and forums

In the early 1990s (and even late 1980s), the holiday season started seeping onto the web through message boards and text archive files. Sites like Textfiles.com now preserve folders of seasonal poems, jokes, and parodies, hosted in a folder called “Holiday Textfiles.” These pieces come from the wider bulletin board system (BBS) and early message-board culture, where people shared text files digitally long before the modern web. Both were precurs

lzf // Shutterstock

This week, global trade policy saw several notable developments suggesting a turning point in how major economies manage supply chains, resource dependencies, and trade imbalances.

The EU’s push to reduce dependency on Chinese raw materials and China’s simultaneous move to streamline rare-earth exports reflect a recalibration of trade flows, away from old dependencies and toward diversification and resilience. Meanwhile, China’s ability to hit a $1 trillion surplus despite shrinking exports to the U.S. underscores the shifting geography of global trade: Chinese exporters are finding demand in other regions even amid Western tariff pressure.

On the U.S. side, domestic politics and social pressures over tariff impacts, especially on agriculture, are leading to compensatory relief packages, highlighting the real-world costs of trade policy decisions. Overall, the week illustrates how businesses, governments, and economic blocs are all trying to navigate a fragmented, volatile trade environment, balancing strategic interests, resource security, and economic stability.

This Week’s Ocean, Air & Freight Markets

China-US Ocean Freight Market:

CEA to USWC: According to Freight Right’s TrueFreight Index (TFX), spot levels attempted to firm this week on the back of carrier-driven micro-GRIs, but actual shipper-level deals in TFX remained close to late-November floors. Week over week, TFX is tracking the average spot freight rate down ~15% from China to USWC and around 16% from China to USEC. Month over month, USWC’s rate has fallen by almost 24%.

CEA to USEC: A similar pattern played out on the USEC. Carriers pushed small December increases, but muted demand and ample capacity limited traction. Week over week, TFX benchmarks decreased but remain within the tight, low-volatility band established after November’s sharp correction.

Freight Right’s TrueFreight Index (TFX) 

Freight Right Global Logistics

Freight Right Global Lo

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