From Christmas Shopping to Christmas Giving: How this website evolved

It didn’t strike me until I was rereading the blog post The best Friday was not Black Friday that I should tell you how this whole thing came about.

I’m a serial website builder – for myself and for others, but mostly myself.

I started blogging in October 2007. The catalyst was Bruce’s major Crohn’s flareup, which led to the loss of his job and my getting a full-time (plus) job with health insurance. I had been freelance editing for several years, and I didn’t want to go back to an office job, but I had no choice.

Two weeks into that 60-hour-a-week newspaper job, which I’ve termed The Job That Would’ve Killed Me If I’d Stayed, I started looking elsewhere. 

Fast-forward to 2021: I was working for myself again, Bruce was on disability and Medicare, and one day I opened an email from a fellow digital content creator.

She was selling a few websites at a discount, including one called ChristmasShopping.Live. (The popular .com domain was long taken, thus the lesser-known .live extension.)

When I saw a Christmas site on the list, I leaped for joy! 

Ten Suzys leaping, and a partridge in a pear tree. (Just go with it.) 

I emailed to ask if she’d accept a little less than her $200 asking price. (I offered her everything that was in my business checking account at the time, minus two bucks to avoid a zero balance.)

To my great joy (nine ladies dancing), she accepted my $192 offer, and Christmas Shopping Live became mine. 

Are you with me so far? (Ignore all that domain-name stuff if it makes your head spin.)

The site was bare-bones by design. She had installed WordPress, uploaded a template, swapped out the default “food blogger” photos, added a few stock Christmas images, typed in basic text, and voilà – a turnkey Christmas website.

The site might’ve been bare bones, but it was beautiful.

NOT MY VIBE

This seller had created a site with warm, cozy neutrals – lovely, but not what I would’ve created for a Christmas site.

And that’s a key point. It wasn’t my usual aesthetic, but the simple beauty of the site opened my eyes to other possibilities. (As they say in the Hallmark movies: It’s the magic of Christmas!)

If I had built from scratch, I wouldn’t have started with brown paper packages tied up with strings (ala Julie Andrews). My version would’ve been bright red and green with shiny gold accents, blues and purples with sparkly silver, candy canes, a light-up snowman and Lord knows what else leaping off the homepage. Basically: Christmas at full blast.

The website’s original owner had knocked it out of the park (think visions of sugarplums, not Clark Griswold light display).

So I took her five or six stock photos, especially the pretty living room Christmas tree with brown paper packages, and began making it my own.

We went from this in 2021 (but I had already started adding my colors – see the green lettering in the menu?):

To this in 2024:

Still warm and cozy, but now the site reflects my own personality – including my need for red. LOL (Try as I might, I just couldn’t keep building a mostly neutral website.)

FROM SHOPPING TO GIVING

But the real shift was this: It went from a “shopping” site to a “giving” site.

I bought the site in 2021, but I didn’t dive in deeply until October 2024, when I finally started working on it in earnest.

For a year, I kept adding posts, searching for the right images, and dreaming about exactly what I wanted the site to become.

(Hint: It all circles back to Jesus.) 

I guess 2025 was just the year it was meant to launch. But I hadn’t thought much about the shopping vs. giving perspective until I was rereading my Black Friday post. The line that struck me is in bold italics in this paragraph:

I hate to shop, and I can’t remember a time I loved to.

Solution: Make this site’s message about giving, about Jesus (the true gift of Christmas), and about generosity, not relentless sales pitches.

Will I promote gift giving? Absolutely. Will I promote sales? Yup. (I’ll include affiliate links in order to keep the site running without ads – I despise in-your-face pop-ups – but those links will be low-key, optional clicks. No spam. No smarm.)

Gift giving guides? Yes. We show love when we gift gifts. But that’s not the only way, and you’ll find plenty of ideas for ways to show your love without spending a dime. (Your ideas are welcome, by the way.)

The heartbeat of this place is simple:

Jesus is the reason for the season, and he is our model for generosity, giving, and loving our people well.

That’s the vibe I hope you’ll feel every time you visit.