OK, look. I’m one of the few people I know who didn’t lose power more than a week ago, so it’s easy for me to philosophize. As far as I know, I’ve got heat, lights, phone, electricity, cable, and my Internet. I’m lucky and I know it.
But my point is that there are times when we need to turn those things off for a while. Admittedly, doing so voluntarily is better than having Mother Nature do it, and I really don’t mean to romanticize being cold and in the dark. I’m just saying . . . that sometimes we need a little peace and quiet this season, a little simplicity, a little time for reflection. Dare I use the word? We need a little peace - for people of goodwill or even otherwise.
I enjoy Christmas traditions as much as the next guy, and I’m aware of how many holiday memories come from or lead to various media. I’ve watched the old, grainy 8mm movies transferred to videotape of us Walsh kids tumbling downstairs on Christmas morning to see what Santa had brought 50 years ago. Not a December goes by when I don’t seek out that old “Miracle on 34th Street” movie (the good one, I mean, the black-and-white 1947 version with Edmund Gwen, John Payne and Maureen O’Hara (certainly not any remakes or updates - the one I remember from my youth). Call it a personal Christmas tradition.
An aside: Even though it’s corny and old-fashioned, I love it. It’s even got a bit of universal, up-to-date political satire in it, when Mr. Shellhammer says innocently of Kris Kringle, “Well, maybe he’s only a LITTLE crazy, like . . . poets . . . or artists . . . or some of those men in Washington.”
But I digress.
I was talking about media and Christmas. People take and send photographs; sometimes that gift under the tree rings or lights up or is connected to cable; some of our most treasured memories are from the media we recall from our earlier days. And there’s a very natural tendency to want to capture in some way or in some form Christmas 2008. Next year we’ll all be a little older. And you know, Aunt Mary isn’t getting any younger . . .
I’ve given and received in my time gifts of music, first on vinyl albums, then on CD’s and iTunes. And there’s approximately five minutes every Christmas season when I really do appreciate and like Christmas carols.
We older folks have our traditions (I have “Miracle on 34th Street”), but the youngsters are creating their own Christmas traditions as we speak. There’s a time for TV specials and lights and glitter and noise and excitement and even talking dolls. They’re all media, and sometimes, when the time is just right, they can bring us back to places in our youth. They are wonderful and quite nearly magical in their power to do so, and I’m not suggesting that we do without them.
Well, actually I am - but only for a little while - at moments of our own choosing. There is also a time to declare our lives and houses and consciousness “media free” zones. Quiet. Simplicity. Peace. Maybe with a candle and a little heat from the furnace certainly, but there is value in quieting our lives and our spirits for a time. It can be as long or as short as you wish.
As members of contemporary society, we constantly run the risk of drowning in our own media amusements, of fashioning our own lives, schedules, and even thoughts around some external gizmo.
TV, radio, the Internet are all wonderful advancements, and I’m a big fan of all of them. Yes, they are loaded with potential and they often (maybe only sometimes) make our lives easier, richer, and even more connected to each other. I’m glad we have them all.
But I’m also aware that each of them has an “off” switch, a handy little feature which perhaps we don’t use enough. We need to remember (because it’s so easy to forget) that those devices are there for us, not the other way around.
So my holiday wish to all of you is a rich and meaningful Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanza or whatever, filled with sights and sounds and enjoyment and even tinsel.
But I also wish that - at some point - you can turn things off and enjoy the thoughts, memories, and significance of life itself and the people you love. People are not media, and sometimes we forget that as well. Used well, media can enrich our lives. Used poorly (or thoughtlessly) media can crowd the important things out of our lives.
Sometimes there is nothing so bright as the twinkle in a child’s eyes, nothing so melodious as peace and quiet, nothing so magnificent as simplicity.
I wish you both this holiday season - the richness of our ability to connect to each other through modern media and the realization that although we enjoy and count on that nearly every day, we really don’t NEED it.
What we really need can be found within.
Bill Walsh is a Billerica resident and regular contributor to the Billerica Minute Minuteman. E-mail him at bmhswalsh@aol.com.