Part 19
As the Silly Season fast approaches, our thoughts turn to more traditional activities. The mix of ancient pagan rituals and Christian tradition has for many years been the established way of celebrating a few days of family togetherness, and the giving of gifts. In a similar time frame, the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah also emphasizes a time of joyous family celebration with particular emphasis on the kids.
Sadly, the purity of these holidays has been grossly diminished by the steady increase in commercialism. Stores introduce the “Holiday Spirit” from early November with Christmas songs and carols jingling mercilessly from every possible audio outlet. Elves, reindeer and the “Ho ho ho” father of the festivities, Santa Claus, exude bonhomie and goodwill and encourage kids to lay guilt trips on their parents with their often outrageous demands for expensive presents – “available at this very store, of course!”
The magic of Christmas in the far-off days of my youth was built on a foundation of quiet and often unspoken expectations, building to a true climax of excitement as the Christmas stocking was hung, positively crying out to be filled with a magical medley of small gifts. This was followed by a rush to the Christmas tree and the wonderful sight of brightly wrapped boxes of assorted shapes and sizes with names attached. If we were lucky, snow had transformed the countryside into a winter wonderland.
I was still a child when we reached South Africa. The efforts to plant fake snow, holly and mistletoe around the house seemed bizarre. These were offset by the prospect of a swim in the surf-pounded beaches, preferably before a huge turkey-based Christmas luncheon. It was all outrageously unsuitable for a hot summer’s day with the temperature hovering around 30 degrees centigrade. Nevertheless, following in the path of a successful novel or movie, the event built to a huge climax, with expectations often realized or even exceeded.
Compare this with today! Weeks of Christmas music wherever you go. Ceaseless exhortations to buy the kids something special this year, as well as that wonderful gift for “him” or “her.” Christmas movies ever more banal and sickly sweet. Social media gone even madder than usual. By the time THE DAY arrives, we’re all flatter than a pancake, exhausted and broke. The kids have raised their expectations way beyond anything they could possibly receive in the way of presents. The month of December has been hijacked and encased in plastic wrappings!
I wrote the following poem to express my feelings that the true spirit of Christmas, muddled though it has always been, is still a day we could and should enjoy:
Dreaming of a Digital Xmas
The silly season’s arrived, heralded by wall-to-wall carols,
Coming earlier every year to boost the stores’ flagging sales
And ramp up our anxieties over choices of Xmas presents.
All vestiges of spiritual awareness and celebrations
Well hidden beneath the plastic cloak of commercialism.
Even so, it remains a time of family fun and reunions,
Of giving and receiving, feasting and moderate, ha ha drinking!It has its merits and ‘tis still a season to be merry,
Just as long as this year’s white-bearded Father Xmas
Is not an AI robot with tinny mechanical “Ho ho hos!”
And virtual reindeer flood the skies, courtesy of Disney.
Xmas Apps, Facebook and Twitter, will carol us to death
As we exchange endless emails of artificial goodwill.
Let’s hope that the final demise won’t now arrive
When robots actually exchange presents with robots
And we humans must finally retreat into our own real world
Far away from this annual invasion of electronic madness!One human to another, I wish you all a really merry Xmas,
And may we never lose sight of the true meaning of this day!
If I had one serious Christmas and New Year’s wish, it would be that ExoBrain software emerges in 2020 to show the world how a sane and workable computing system will remove a massive pile of unnecessary garbage that is attached to existing systems. My wish includes the expectation that through ExoTech we will finally have a computing system that we can actually control instead of being dragged along willy-nilly into the realms of confused thinking and false data…I expect the ExoBrain will do what you tell it to do, rather than you having to do what it tells you to do.
I wish everyone who visits the ExoTech website Happy Holidays and the hope that you will avoid the digital tinsel and cacophony, to enjoy a truly loving time with family and friends!
An ExoTech Ltd shareholder, Chris is currently authoring two of the four books to be published the day ExoBrain launches and has helped to create ExoBrain’s introductory video to the Confidential Technical Briefing. Chris has spent his working life in the film and television industry, starting with BBC Television in London, then ATV in Birmingham becoming, at the time, the youngest Studio Manager in Britain.
Later, in South Africa, he wrote and directed film and TV commercials, having four South African entries at the Cannes Advertising Festival. After a number of years of writing and directing or producing documentaries (eight international awards) and corporate videos, he concentrated on writing feature film screenplays (five screened) and television series (seven screened). He has a novel, ”Pursuit of Treachery,” with a literary agent and is currently obtaining finance for an action adventure feature film he has written and is co-producing. He is a published poet and has given many readings.