Journey through Christmases Past - Christmas 1994

 

Welcome to our newest feature, Journey through Christmases Past. This series is a nostalgic celebration of the holidays we all remember...

• The history and traditions of the holiday.
• The décor that filled our homes.
• The toys that defined each decade.
• The television and movie shows that brightened the season.
• The outfits we adored (and the ones we definitely didn’t).

Along the way, I’ll sprinkle in a few of my own Christmas memories. So settle in with a cup of your favorite hot beverage and join me on a journey through Christmases past.

Happy Sunday! I am sitting here after spending most of the weekend working, wondering how August is almost over. Christmas is only 116 days away! My social media is filled with fall lists and Christmas posts. Herrschners' new Christmas Collection is on its website. And Christmas is in the news again as I search Google. It seems everything Christmas is at our online fingertips these days. But back in 1994, things were different. 

• Though Amazon was founded in the summer of 1994, the website wouldn't launch until a year later. 
• Earlier that year, Jerry Yang and David Filo were working on a directory of websites. Renamed Yahoo! in April 1994, by September they had compiled over 2000 websites and were getting 50,000 hits a day. The company wouldn't go public until spring 1996. 
• Ask Jeeves, which later became Ask.com, launched in 1997. It came out before Google, guys! 
• DVDs were first released in Japan in 1996, and in the States the following year. 
• Though digital cameras were available, they came with a hefty price tag. It would be the early 2000s before digital cameras outsold traditional film cameras. 
• When you wanted to watch a movie outside of the theater, you drove to Blockbuster, which was ten years away from hitting its peak. 
• Netflix was three years away from being founded as a mail-order DVD rental service. 
• While PlayStation launched in Japan in December 1994, it would be the fall of 1995 before it was available in the United States. 
• From Max Smart's shoe phone in the series Get Smart to Magnum driving around in his red Ferrari with his big mobile phone in Magnum P.I., the technology was considered quirky and not necessarily for the average person. That would change in 2007 with the launch of the iPhone.
• In December 1994, Wells Fargo was still six months away from being the first major bank to launch a website for checking balances and statements. 

Some may see 1994 as the last analog Christmas. Kids were still circling things in the Sears Wish Book, and their holiday commercial told us that Sears was "Where Wishes Come Home for the Holidays." Malls were social hubs and at the center of holiday culture. Holiday specials were live on television, and music came on vinyls--which we still called records, CDs, and cassettes. The majority of photos were taken with film cameras and brought to a store for developing. Gamers were switching cartridges out of their Super Nintendo or Sega Genesis when they wanted a new game. People wrote out holiday cards--some of us still do--and talked to family and friends on their landlines. Most people didn't even have email yet. 

The internet and online retailers definitely changed shopping habits and personal interactions over the years. But what remains the same is that Christmas will always pull us back to the moments that matter, no matter how much life speeds up around us.