Tech Talk / By Martha Knight

The irresistible thing about Christmas is the great infusions of nostalgia we get. We are hooked on Christmas Past, but with many more visitations of it than Ebenezer Scrooge received from that apparition.

Yes, we might be giving a lot of attention to the Now version, Christmas (in the) Present, and surely the electronics we might get, give, buy for ourselves or just lust for occupy our thoughts, invited by the ads and commercials.

But watching the Forths in the comic strip, living out their traditions, we know we are a lot like them. We have out mementos. We have our collections of Christmas stuff. It gets fetched forth, if we have the gumption, from attic or basement or garage or closet.

Tree technology—remember when the really tough job was getting the tree set up in its stand, in the right spot, and then getting the lights draped around it? Check your photo albums for the shots featuring the present openings, taken after you opened the Kodak package first.

For us old timers, those lights used to be largish bulbs strung together in strings which could be plugged together. The older style strings featured serial wiring. If one bulb died, so did the rest.

Every year when we stored those tree lights we checked them all, to make sure they would all light, and put them away with tender care. But somehow every December when we got them out, one or more had died, dooming whole strings.

Fortunately we had extra bulbs! So when we found a “dead” string of lights, we swapped “known good” bulbs into socket after socket, until the string came back to life.

Newer light strings had parallel wiring, so we invested in those when we could. A bulb might die here and there, but its companions carried on valiantly. Reflected by shiny ornaments and some tinsel, they lit up the room, and could be glimpsed from outdoors if the living room windows were big enough.

For a while there was a fad for aluminum trees, some silvery and some bronzy (maybe grown from those pine cones sprayed with silver or gold paint?). We could add ornaments and tinsel and even fluffy garlands, but no electricity on the tree itself. Instead, get a spotlight-like device to set on the floor, with changing colors. It would bathe the tree in light, changing like a traffic signal. As an added tough, set the tree on a motorized turntable, so it would twirl while the spotlight changed. The effect was downright psychedelic.

Then twinkle lights became popular. On green trees or natural, twinkle lights replaced some or all of the “regular” strings of lights. They were hypnotic, blinking on and off in their unpredictable patterns.

Next we began to add lights to porches and shrubbery. Strings of lights were draped on railings and around posts and columns. Evergreens and even naked hardwoods sprouted glowing bulbs. Soon animals and Santas and other objects were added to the landscape, and illuminated.

Things continued in that direction until the energy crisis. Electricity and fuel were scarce. There were rolling brownouts, long lines at the gas pumps. We had to wait to get a new gas service. That might have been when stations had to change gas pumps to show dollars as well as cents and tenths.

It was considered unpatriotic to consume extra energy with outdoor holiday lights. A few wreathes would have to do, some real candles in jars. We set electric candles on windowsills, just a few, and left them on just from dusk until we went to bed.

Then energy became plentiful again, and we were so relieved we stood still for the gruesome price increases.

And along came LED lights. Low energy sparkle. Icicle lights, a thousand points of light, and that was just counting the ones draped on the front porch eaves. A few more thousand for the gables, then more for the garage and the shrubs. Next we needed a sleigh and a team of reindeer, plus Rudolph, and of course Santa, and maybe all the elves.

Indoors some people, the ones who tell us they just love Christmas, need several trees: a main tree, maybe a “natural” one smelling wonderful and requiring careful watering, or maybe a pre-lit, pre-decorated one. Then a smaller one, or two, with lights. And garlands on the mantel and the stairs, with lights. I have not seen lighted mistletoe yet, but that will be next.

As for sound, we used to get out the Christmas records around Thanksgiving, and play them on the phono, platter after platter (using the record changer, of course), or our cassette tapes.

Every year some new Christmas albums came out. New recordings of old standards, new Christmas songs. How old is the Cohen “Hallelujah”?  Or “Mary Did You Know?”? New groups put out their “covers” of Christmas hits. Even Cark Klein played the Leroy Anderson “Sleighride” in his recent recital at UPB, and I would buy that recording if it were available, no matter how many others of that piece I have.

There are signs that Jodi Arias did not manage to ruin “O Holy Night” permanently after all, with her prison talent show rendition, inaccurate, off-key, lacking affect, and downright sacrilegious, considering the source. My all-time favorite rendition was by Bette Wellman.

Now our Christmas music is available for download, for watching on YouTube, for toting around playing on our devices, hearing through buds and headphones and cells, for watching and hearing Trudbol cloned individuals singing as trios and quartets and entire ensembles.

Maybe all this will seem quaint, in Christmas Future, when we speak the title and artist’s name to our watch and the music comes out of the ceiling or the implant in our mastoid bone.

But just maybe there will still be people singing “Silent Night” at Christmas Eve processionals, holding their (non-electric) candles.