Merry Christmas?

I had the most surprising (aren’t they all?) dream last night. I was playing piano in an airport with a long line of over a hundred people and started playing Christmas Carols with all the people joining in singing—with magnificent 4-part harmony! Where did that come from?!!

 

The feeling tone was one of glorious uplift. I do love many of those songs and even though I am a Jewish by blood/ Unitarian by upbringing/ Buddhist by practice, I did celebrate Christmas both as a kid and an adult and grew to love that certain magic in the air that the songs and the season can evoke. Don’t love all the lyrics and truth be told, kind of wish that Jesus never would have been born, in the face of all the havoc done in his name. Of course, we miserably flawed humans probably would have found someone else and ended up blindly obeying the Gospel of Fred. But in spite of all the male-created power obsessions about Jesus as King of Kings and Lord of Lords who shall reign forever and ever (no term limits!), the music is great and balanced by some peace-loving images of little towns in Bethlehem and an innocent babe in a manger and angels with harps of gold. Not to mention the partridges in the pear tree. 

 

With those carols singing so tunefully in my dreams, I awoke happy and refreshed. When my wife came into the kitchen, I told her about the dream and then began to walk to another room to begin my day when I suddenly heard the seasonal song Sleigh Bells playing! What was that? Walked back to find the source and it was my damn phone! Apparently, Big Sister Siri eavesdropped on our conversation and thought she should play that song for me. WTF?!!!! Nothing to kill the Christmas Spirit faster than to realize how we are being listened to and manipulated by our machines. It is beyond creepy!

Can we just get back to landlines, letters and post offices, asking people for directions, asking each other for information or going to the library to look things up, writing checks or paying cash, calling taxis, listening to vinyl records and the radio, getting the news, weather report, movie listings from the morning paper? This is not naïve nostalgia. It’s remembering when we weren’t vulnerable to constant surveillance and algorhythms and addiction to devices that we all agreed to just so everything could be faster and more “convenient” at a price we never imagined having to pay. 

 

Bah humbug!!!