Dec. 25 – Krakow, Poland

The Okens family Skypemas dinner.

There will come a time when tales of Skype-ing your family on Christmas Eve will sound old-fashioned and quaint – like actually hand-writing a letter or going on a sleigh ride. But we’re not there yet.

Let’s have a virtual show of hands if you Skyped someone for Christmas, or chatted with people via Facebook. Chances are, if you’re reading this you did one or the other or both. And why wouldn’t you? It’s cheap, easy, and impossible to be with everybody you know and love. There are rumblings that our hyperconnectedness makes us unhappy. That it strips us of true human contact and makes us lonely, even as our number of Facebook friends expands. But for me, this Christmas, this was not true at all.

Krakow could make a stranger sad right about now. It got milder and the snow vanished. There are, in fact, few lights and I did not find large nighttime gatherings of people going to Christmas mass. This morning, out for a run, I encountered only a few dog walkers along the river. But in the middle of this medieval town, there is Wifi and I have a MacBook Air.

Yesterday was my first-ever Skypemas dinner with my parents, sister and aunt. My hostel suite has a kitchen, and I cooked up some cheese pierogies to go with kolbasa sausage, borscht-in-a-cup and plus-sized Polish beer. I fired up my laptop and connected to my parents’ Skype address in Canada. And so we had a dinner table (lunch for them) conversation in between my mouthfuls of pierogies and gulps of “Kasztelan Niepasteryzowane” which is smoother to drink than to say. Contacts such as these don’t need to be long or particularly deep to be meaningful. That improvised gathering was the most important thing I did yesterday.

The Internet provided a few other bonuses. I listened to two CBC broadcasts; the reading of the story “The Shepherd” (a Facebook link by a friend) and this year’s “Vinyl Café” concert. These have become a yearly ritual and I felt right at home, here in my hostel in Poland. Courtesy of YouTube, Elvis crooned “Blue Christmas”. And on Facebook, friends reported about Santa-impersonating fathers, cats sleeping on the wrapping paper, and about gathering with family.

“Home for Christmas” is not about to disappear. A MacBook Air cannot give you a kiss under the mistletoe. On Christmas morning, fiber optic cable won’t squeal with glee seeing the presents under the tree. But if you are alone at this most sentimental of times, and you know the difference between the real and the virtual, get online.

Thanks for reading, and Merry Christmas!