Christmas traditions remain the same down generations

‘Have things really changed so much?’

THERE I was walking along Reform Street, head in the Christmas clouds, when a lady stopped me.

“Agreed with what you said,” she said. She clocked my vacant/slightly alarmed expression.

“Your bit in the Tele. The internet. I agree, everyone’s on it these days.”

The penny dropped — that she had read last week’s column — and I asked if she’d done her present shopping online too.

“Not much chance of that,” she said. “I don’t even have a mobile phone.”

The lady (she said I could use a madeup name and requested Sophia “like Loren”) was “the upper side of 75” and told me I’d missed an important aspect in my article.

That a world linked by the web may have huge advantages but it makes people like her feel like dinosaurs.

Every night her favourite TV programmes tell her to vote on an app (“my grandchildren have given up explaining what an app is — same for Wi-Fi”) or tweet at some “hashcake” (I think she meant hashtag) and she doesn’t have a clue what it all means.

“I feel left behind,” she said. “Even though I have no desire to text and tweet and Google, I get glimpses all the time of how everyone else seems to be living and it feels lonely.”

Ah, but here’s the thing, I told her. The really important things have not changed at all.

It was Christmas Eve when we had our conversation and I’d just left my threeyear-old. His first Christmas knowing about Santa was proving magical, although he had his concerns — like ensuring the fire was out so Father Christmas didn’t burn his bottom coming down the chimney.

As it was for Sophia’s grandchildren, her children, herself as a child and her mum before her, the magic of the anticipation of sleigh bells on the roof existed then — and it still exists now.

The important part of Christmas Day will never be about looking at a computer.

Being with family, feeling loved, saying prayers, going to church, snuggling up in front of the telly, the Queen’s speech — different things make the day special for different people, but have things really changed so much over the generations when it comes down to it? Sophia thought about this and smiled. “For me, Christmas is about going to church and having lunch with my family,” she said.

“But do you know the best part of my day? It’s getting a taxi home and having a bit of Christmas pudding with the TV on. Just me and a picture of my late husband.

“I don’t suppose I could do that on a phone.”

It felt good to have cheered Sophia up and we wished each other a #hashcake Merry Christmas.

Next up, it’s New Year. Thank you for keeping me company this year and a huge thanks for every single email and letter. May 2017 be your best year yet.

Tributes left outside George Michael’s home where the singer was found dead on Christmas Day.