Christmas Dinner on Video Chat: Families Now Gather on Skype

The cold fireplace of video chat, of voice and video communication through computers and cell phones, illuminates with its bluish lights the new long-distance Christmas. Skype, Google Chat, Apple’s FaceTime and other technologies for live video communication are starting to replace the physical migration required for a celebration with the relatives. The precept remains, but it is observed by turning on an application rather than lighting a log of wood, by moving a finger rather than your legs, and by staying far away.

Stanford University, in a joint academic study with the Sorbonne in Paris, is the first to notice the spreading phenomenon of technology replacing family reunions, especially useful when economic difficulties advise against travel expenses, distances are prohibitive or physical conditions, such as illness or age, make the get-together around the same red tablecloth or tree impossible.

Opening Skype, the most used program, generates a family gathering that is not only totally virtual, but also infinitely less risky than the forced happiness of a reunion with a despised brother-in-law or unbearable cousin. It creates a sense of unity without the hassle and the nuclear stress. It’s the chaste equivalent of phone sex, a melancholy shield against illnesses, sentimental responsibilities and unwanted pregnancies.

Among the 300 million video calls* made each day in the world through Skype — much more than any other media — 30 million will be made on Christmas in the United States. The New York Times calculates that one in 10 residents will wish “Merry Christmas” face to face, without meeting.**

He or she will open packages delivered by the post office or private couriers under the eye of the screen’s webcam, feigning joy and gratitude for the toy, shaking with delight for the sweater or the received knick-knack, but without having to actually use or unwillingly wear it.

The legendary “old folks” unloaded in nursing homes — always and offensively ascribed a total inability to use even simple cash cards — will be among the highest users of this New Christmas, with a technology once reserved for stuffy conference calls. They have either learned or have somebody by their side to upload the program and teach them the few necessary controls.

Stanford’s sociologists say that children love this development, not only, and not especially — unfortunately for their grandparents — for the pleasure of seeing their far away and white-haired grandfather’s face, but because they can see their own face on the screen. They love seeing themselves, as vanity and egocentricity are the most secure traits of human personality.

In Jewish communities — those that the newspaper of the largest Jewish city in the world, New York, examines with due attention — where they celebrate Hanukkah, the Feast of Lights, an ugly but effective neologism has been coined: “Skypanukkah.” The cold fireplace surpasses the limitations of the old telephone passed from hand to hand for hasty wishes and enables group participation among families and households. You can frame and display the whole room and your entire group to relatives overlooking the ocean or on another continent. You can concentrate bunches of little faces in front of the screen for the obligatory call to relatives and show that everybody is there. You can get warm without getting burned. And, as a mother divorced from her husband notes with a certain melancholy, it can give the spouse who won’t come back to the table the feeling of fulfilling his fatherly duties, by blowing kisses and offering useless advice from behind the screen of his cell phone or PC.

As far as privacy is concerned, fears are that those personal images you launch into the void of the web may someday appear on sites or in unwanted locations. Therefore you should control your emotions and take care of your appearance, remembering that nothing out there in the big ocean is ever private or reserved. Airline companies have been airing commercials for weeks to exalt the authentic joy and tenderness of real, live meetings around warm fireplaces and tables of food that can be eaten together, not just seen. The fear is that laziness, costs, stress and memories of disastrous and tragic past family reunions will deter those 20 million Americans who travel on Christmas by plane, car or — rarely — train from undertaking a journey involving security stripteases, lost baggage and missed connections.

Even the lunch or dinner ritual can be substituted and virtualized. The New York Times says that a new trend is spreading: sending delicacies from the family menu to relatives imprisoned in nursing homes to compensate for bleak institutional cuisine, and to create from a distance what more fortunate family members dine on.***

And if the addressee should unfortunately dislike the pate, pastry or soup, he won’t be obliged to choke it down with compliments to the chef as he would around a warm fireplace. He can act appreciative and promise to consume them later — or throw them in the toilet, away from offended looks.

Therefore the researchers and collectors of anecdotal journalism conclude that there are many advantages in the new TV Christmas and the cold fireplace. That’s why their popularity grows. The problem of how the benevolent, fat guy in red pajamas could come down through the screen of a cell phone to deposit his gifts remains unsolved. But that is a technical problem that all children, at least those lucky enough to still receive gifts, will easily solve by themselves as soon as they get older.

*Editor’s note: According to Skype, it is 300 million minutes of video calls each day.

**Editor’s note: This attribution to the New York Times, while accurately translated, could not be verified.

***Editor’s note: This attribution to the New York Times, while accurately translated, could not be verified.