As I write this, yesterday was Thanksgiving and 2025 is coming to a close so I’m pretty wrapped up in wrapping up a mixed bag of a year.
I think a lot about the effects of our current digital world on our children. Before laptops and cell phones, there were radios and televisions. Watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade yesterday, I was told that it was the 100th anniversary of NBC. This bit of trivia sent me down a less-than-trivial rabbit hole.
Last week, I had the pleasure of bringing a work of art to my grandkids’ 4th grade class. It was Coryell’s Ferry by Joseph Pickett. Not a trained artist, Picket painted a landscape of his community on the Delaware River, some 60 years after Washington’s crossing on Christmas Even, 1776, during the Colonies’ Revolutionary War against King George. The scene depicts several mills on the river and Washington peering across the river through a spy glass. One of the children offered that the mills were generating electricity as the water turned the wheels shown.
So here’s the rabbit hole: Nope, there was no electricity being generated by those water wheels in Washington’s time. They were operating turns and cogs to grind wheat into flour, stamp out nails, or make felt from woolen cloth, typically. But within 100 years, Edison would have harnessed electricity and invented the light bulb and almost concurrently, Marconi and Tesla would have found a way to generate and capture wireless energy transmission: radio.
Within the next 50 years, almost every home had a radio device and NBC was on “the air”. The first commercial advertising a product for our consumption was a Bulova watch ad that aired during a baseball game in 1941. Television was growing quickly and by the 50’s most homes had a television.
What does this have to do with you?
Before the advent of radio and television, if you wanted to know what was going on in the world around you, you had to read. If you couldn’t read, you had to know someone who did. All of this electronic technology coincided with the Industrial Revolution and the ability to produce goods quickly and cheaply bringing people in from the country to work in mills and factories. Soon enough, radio and TV were now there to let us know what we “needed”.
The children in your homes who have come from dire poverty (the poverty that sees a 4-year-old boy scavenging garbage cans for something for him and his 2-year-old brother to eat) probably had a television until the power was turned off for lack of payment. I recall a family in our emergency shelter once who had a cable subscription but didn’t pay the nominal rent we charged anyone with a job. But I digress.
Many of the children with whom you live have lived lives immersed in the consumerism that are the waters we all swim in these days. When their shoes were 3 sizes too small, if they were lucky, someone cut holes in them to relieve the pressure. If not, they just walked around in pain or simply went barefoot. But turn on the TV and they see shoes that make you jump higher and go faster, sodas that get you through hard days, and snacks that bring all your friends over for a lot of fun.
When the humans around don’t have the inclination to enjoy your company or meet your most basic needs, it can look like stuff might just be the answer to filling the gaping hole in your heart. Sadly, it doesn’t. Any brief relief is just that, brief, but Wall Street has made a science of contenting us with brief satisfaction. This fleeting satisfaction is guaranteed to sell more tomorrow. If we just had the right outfit, hairdo, hoodie, shoes, dress size, car, we would be happy. And on and on and on.
Too often, we approach the holidays with an idealized, technology driven idea of what they are supposed to be. We measure our efforts against whether everyone ate everything on their plate or gushed over every gift under the tree. We hope against hope that no one will “ruin” the day for us, that everyone will be on their best behavior and appreciate everything we’ve done.
My wish for you this holiday season is enough. You have enough. You are enough. You bring what you can to each day. Some days you bring a cornucopia of gifts and patience and hope. Some days you beat your drum as loudly as you can but no one hears it. Some days even bringing a smile is beyond your capacity. Resist the suggestion that you need more, need to do more, bring more, give more, make more. Find contentment in your own soul and you’ll find a wide horizon of understanding for those around you still struggling to join you on this couch of peace. Be grateful that you are capable of gratitude. Be thankful that you are not caught in the trap of something new will make me whole.
Ours is a beautiful world. The journey each of us takes in this beautiful world are seldom straight lines. This season, find it in your heart to honor that each of us is endowed with only the pursuit of happiness. Some of us are just more prepared to find it than others. I wish that you find a moment of it in yourself and those who love you. If they aren’t near, literally, figuratively, or temporally, hold on to memories of enjoying their company.
Peace,
Cathy
