Christmas Missives

My favorite part of Christmas is getting carefully crafted letters from old friends and acquaintances. One of my life-long friends, Eric Madsen, sends out a hilarious Christmas missive every year highlighting the antics of his (now grown) children. We generally don’t hear much from Eric and his family during the year, but we never lose track of what is going on with the Madsen family thanks to Eric’s annual Christmas letters.

Last year Eric wrote about how his boys “once hung on his every word and now hang him with every word.” In the old days, he says, “he served as a fount of advice” for his children. Now any suggestion he makes is “met with rolling eyes, heaving sighs and cries of “ole school!”” Eric writes with a wink: “They are not as smart as they think. I’m still lucid enough to have them removed from my will. That’s how we roll in my ole school!”

Those of us with children over the age of 18 can easily relate. At one point in my life I was teaching my three daughters – to put it delicately -- the basics of good hygiene. Somewhere along the way our roles got reversed. Whatever happened to the wisdom of age? In a fast changing technological world it would seem, the older you get, the less you know.

I don’t want to become obsolete before my time, so I made a concerted effort this year to try and keep up and not be too “ole school”. For example, I asked my daughter Jessica to upload her music to my i-pod so I can learn what music kids are listening to these days. Still, I wouldn’t know Taylor Swift if you put her in a photo line-up. I would have to go to class to learn all the pop culture trivia my kids seem to know naturally. Popular culture was never my strong suit, even when I was a kid.

Every year I feel I am falling still further behind. I only recently heard about the movie that’s all the teenage rage -- Twilight and New Moon. The entire country was going nuts about the sequel before I even knew it was a bestselling book and hit movie. I would not have known about any of it were it not for a news report on CNBC about the box office take! I guess we are what we read or listen to.

In my quest to stay current, about six months ago I decided to register on Facebook, because I was curious about how these social networking sites work. Suddenly have 71 “friends” (many are people I knew in high school -- more like acquaintances than “friends” really.) Nevertheless, my “friends” post something about their day, every day. And if that is not enough, I can follow them on Twitter and learn about their every passing thought or emotion. Do I really want to know that much about them? No, I don’t think so. (And I’m quite sure they really don’t know (or care to know) that much about me.)

My daughter June, on the other hand, is someone I DO care about and she sends me mostly nonsensical “tweets” on a regular basis. I love to get these inane blurbs, but half the time I have no idea what she is talking about. For example, the latest tweet she sent was “Hello Wednesday. I thought you were Friday.” (She sends news flashes like this at 9 PM Hawaiian time, causing my cell phone to alert for an income message at 3 AM.) Huh? Hello? I tweet back: “Forget about what day it is…what planet are you on? Love Dad. ”

Keeping in touch is an act of love…or at least it use to be. But with all the “communicating” going on these days –through cell phones, texting, e-mailing, social networks and the like -- what is there left to say of substance in a Christmas card or letter? It may be “ole school” but I still love getting a Christmas card or letter with a hand written note from people you really know and love.

May God bless us all with love, happiness, peace, good health and prosperity! Now, let’s go make 2010 another unforgettable year!