Christmas is a very important holiday in the Western world, and the build up to it is bigger than the actual day – in fact, the build up creates the majority of the fun and the stress of the season! In this article we have collected some sites that are dedicated to the Christmas season.
Some have scrolling effects, some are interactive – but they are all designed to bring a smile to your face at this time of year, and they do the job admirably. It is a great service these designers and developers do for us as there is not much in it for them other than showcasing their amazing skills. So take a little time, sit back and visit these sites to get the festive juices flowing!
Websites Dedicated to the Christmas Season
Merry SVG Christmas
This site was created by Petr Tichy of ihatetomatoes.net, and is a Google Chrome experiment using SVG images. When the page first loads, the tree ‘grows’, then there is a pulsating circle on the tree that you have to click, and the rest of the page is ‘drawn’. Little blue mice push the gifts under the tree, and finally a mouse runs up the tree. You can now click on the gifts that reveal social media sharing buttons, and on the face in the tree that causes the little blue mouse to run out of the tree and turn into a white mouse.
Falcon White
This German site has some very nice scrolling effects, and every page as you scroll down is in black and white with a Christmassy theme.
Why You Love Christmas
This is a very comical site – on each page is a Christmas tradition, such as present giving, carol singing, etc. There are two call-to-action buttons, the first one shows what these traditions are like according to advertising, the second shows the reality – which of course, is always a disaster! The site is actually promoting a Christmas carol app for iPhone and Android.
The Christmaser
This site is very amusing, and you can spend hours on here seeing what it comes up with for each word you input. The About page says: ‘The Christmaser is the most magical thing in the whole wide world – a machine that takes anything and makes it a Christmasy GIF! As you can see from its appearance, it’s unbelievably high tech and complicated.’ It was created by redpepper.
It’s a Shape Christmas
This is a very nice idea. If you click on the numbers, you are presented with an illustration created using the shape given – triangle, pentagon, circle, square or hexagon, and there are some very nice illustrations included, which you can share, like and/or download.
Here is an example – it’s behind number 1, and was created by Brandon James Scott, using a triangle.
IMRE & 5Loom present The Great Snowball Fight
This is a fund-raising site where you can select the thrower and the target from the companies staff members. If you ‘submit and share’, IMRE will donate $7, if you only submit, they will donate $5 – it’s a great idea that costs you nothing except a little time, and a little fun! The money raised is for Military Kids.
Santa Tracker
This is a Google Maps site – their About section reads: ‘On Christmas Eve we’ll be proudly showcasing a Santa’s dashboard, the technology that powers his sleigh during his around-the-world journey. We’ve received this special preview from one of Santa’s many developer elves, who are hard at work in the North Pole helping Santa prepare for his big day. Santa’s dashboard – featuring the latest and greatest in Google Maps technology and sleigh engineering – will allow you to follow his progress around the world, and also learn a little about some of his stops along the way.’ Clicking on any of the location pins brings up an animated illustration.
Season’s Tweetings
This British site is full of seasonal Twitter stats. It is UK-relevant, but is interesting wherever you are in the world.
Polish Christmas Guide
Are you interested in knowing about traditions observed by other countries? If so, this is a great way to discover Poland’s traditions. You take Santa on a walk with the horizontal scrolling, and collect items for his sleigh along the route. There is also lots of information about the traditions observed by Poland at Christmas time.
Merry Christmas from FP Creative
This is a nice gesture and a little bit of fun from FP Creative. Clicking on the bauble makes animated heads (of the team) pop out of the windows and sing to you!
Merry Christmallax
This is another site produced by ihatetomatoes.net. The image shown below is the end of the scrolling experience. It starts of with a page of graph paper and the instruction ‘Get scrolling’. The parallax scrolling site shows the Christmas tree being drawn, through the sketch stage to the final illustration.
Pixelgyar Karacsony
This Hungarian site uses scrolling animations, where you travel through the night with Santa in his sleigh.
Conclusion
Hopefully you have enjoyed viewing these creative sites that help us get in the mood for Christmas and the festive season.
Have you come across any Christmas sites that we have missed from this list? Please share your opinions and links with us in the comments section.
