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Virtual Christmas Gifts
As much as the pandemic put a chill on holiday travel before, this year’s soaring gas prices may put a freeze on many people’s long distance plans.
Through the magic of modern technology and some good, old-fashioned Christmas cheer, we can still reach out and share some Yuletide joy.
Virtually Christmastime
Technology is a gift of God. After the gift of life it is perhaps the greatest of God’s gifts. It is the mother of civilizations, of arts and of sciences. ~Freeman Dyson
We’ve been a highly mobile society for centuries now. Whether in search of adventure, in government or military service or simply seeking some elbow room, people have left their homes far behind.
In years past, keeping in touch by mail or sending gifts home had been an iffy proposition.
Eventually, the mail became more reliable. Innovations such as the telegraph, telephone and television helped to make the world more accessible to those who stayed behind.
With the invention of the internet, we suddenly had the entire world in our keyboards and even our phones.
Nowadays, we can speak to someone in any country at a moment’s notice. What used to be the fantastical domain of science fiction is now so commonplace as to inspire a yawn. We can actually talk to someone on our watches as if we were Dick Tracy.
Just as writing letters gave way to the telephone, email has been supplanted by texting and social media.
Even so, there’s still the question of sending gifts. How do you shove a Christmas present through your Wi-Fi connection?
But What To Send?
Virtual Christmas gifts that you can buy and send online
Okay, it’s 2022. Unless you’ve been living in a timewarp, you’ve probably already bought things from sites and had them delivered to people. Some sites even offer gift wrapping. That’s not exactly virtual, though.
Let’s look at some ideas for virtual Christmas gifts that you can send to your loved ones near and far.
e-Cards: To be honest, you’ve probably already thought of this one. These charming holiday greetings have been available in one form or another since the 90s. There are tons of quality vendors like Basic Invite, Blue Mountain and Hallmark.
Letter Crafts: Writing a newsletter for general distribution or a personalized letter to particular recipients can be created easily with your favorite word processor, whether that’s Microsoft Word, Google Docs or OpenOffice. You can include individual photos you’ve taken since last Christmas, family portraits or set the background of the letter to be a portrait of you or of the recipient.
Video Message: You can record yourself with your phone or desktop webcam and send it through social media or an instant messaging program. If you’re camera shy, you can create cute holiday videos with services like Animoto or Portable North Pole.
Photo Crafts: You could create a custom pinboard on Pinterest to celebrate and inspire your loved ones throughout the season. You could create or find desktop backgrounds, phone backgrounds or other digital goodies that speak to your loved one’s interests, experiences or happy times with you. You might even create a virtual Advent Calendar with photos of your memories of times together.
Activities: You could scour sites like AllRecipes, Food.com or Spend With Pennies to compile a virtual cookbook. You could scour sites like YouTube, Vimeo or Rumble to build a virtual playlist of videos that cater to their interests and hobbies. If you’re really creative, you might even create a virtual scavenger hunt to send your friends and relatives on.
Books: Near and dear to my heart, you can always send virtual books from Kindle, Nook, Project Gutenberg or Loyal Books. You can also send narrated books from Audible or LibriVox. There are more than a few channels on YouTube who have recordings of classic books such as Greatest Audiobooks, Steve Parker Audiobooks and Bitesized Audio Classics.
Of course, you can always send them to our Holiday Season Serial Romances for an enjoyable read. We’ve got 3 already published and this year’s will start, as always, on Thanksgiving Day. We will present a new episode every day of the holiday season, ending on Epiphany.
Hopefully, this has got your creative juices flowing. You may come up with a lot of ideas for virtual presents to share that we hadn’t even considered.
Keeping It Real, Across Cyberspace
God’s gifts put man’s best dreams to shame. ~Elizabeth Barrett Browning
The possibilities are virtually limitless, but the important thing to keep in mind is that the best gifts are very personal.
The point is to keep in touch with loved ones who may not be easy to go visit over the holidays. The miracle of modern technology helps us bridge otherwise impassible distances.
Certainly, it would be the best Christmas present ever to surprise a distant relative by traveling to wherever they may be. That’s not an option that’s available to most of us.
The next best thing is to bring the far corners of the Earth right into your living room or even into your phone wherever you might be. We can choose to keep in touch with friends and family the world over each and every day.
While giving gifts at Christmas is fun and fulfilling, we need to remember that we can give the gift of ourselves as often as possible. You can go virtually anywhere at virtually anytime to reach out and share the gift of love because we all know it’s Christmas All The Time.
While our family and friends may be scattered across the face of the Earth, our love for them is boundless.
Through the miracle of modern technology, we can reach out across oceans and continental divides with a few clicks.
Christmas is a wonderful time to let them know you’re thinking of them, but every day is a great day to let them know they’re always in your heart.