The Christmas Card of 2024 shows a neural network on which the text MERRY CHRISTMASS is written (erroneously spelled like in good ol' 2022). The choice of a neural network was made due to the nobel prize recipients for physics and chemistry. As a tribute to 2024, a few highlights of the year are depicted around the card. In the bottom left corner, one can find the olympic rings. In the center, a node is replaced by a cicada. The emblem of Nihon Hidankyo, winner of the Noble peace prize 2024, can also be observed. I've been to both Amsterdam and Croatia this year and for this reason, two nodes have been filled with a tulip and a croatian checkerboard (sahovnica), respectively. A couple of snowflakes render the whole a little more attractive. At the bottom, a dragon in christmas socks is resting on a suspiciously structurized snowy landscape (chinese year of the dragon). The QR code links to this website.
The 2023 card depicts a happy little Christmas cow (a reference known to the initiated), waving at the viewer (you). They have a wooden peg leg because they were a pirate during its turbulent youth. The cow drifts in a bath of milk, evident from the lactose, casein, lactic acid and tripalmitoylglycerol molecules and potassium and calcium ions that surround it.
The Christmas card of 2022 depicts a Santa Claus figure locked up in an Erlenmeyer flask, to which a local weather front has brought some snow. On the top of the card, a ribbon of amino acids (peptide) hangs from the left to the right. Its one letter abbreviations spell “MERRY CHRISTMASS FROM IOCHEN”. There is no J amino acid. The ribbon is suspended by 2 small Christmas trees. From above, two types of snowflakes fall from the sky (hexaethynylbenzene & 1,3,5-triazidotriethylbenzene) and react before reaching the bottom in a cycloaddition from click chemistry for which a Noble prize was awarded in 2022.
The Christmas card of 2020 shows a santa figure on a sled pulled by reindeer. Santa is calling out the recognizable monicker 'Hohoho' under the form of the repeated element Holmium. In the background, snowflakes are depicted in the shape of a random complex polyaromatic compound. Beneath the 'Merry Christmas' message, my name Jochen is written, where each letter is a molecule ('J': acrylnitrile, 'O': benzene, 'C': 1,5-hexadiene, 'H': oxalic acid, 'E': citric acid & 'N': butadiene). Next to it, three compounds responsible for the smell of pines are depicted: α-pineen, β-pineen & bornyl acetate.
