“To the top of the porch, to the top of the wall, now dash away! Dash away! Dash away, all!”  – Santa Claus in Clement C. Moore’s Twas the Night Before Christmas.

Today, our class went to see The Polar Express with approximately 4,683 other children.  (I exaggerate, but not by much.)  My kids were very excited and after the movie, I overheard these conversational tidbits:

Child 1: Did Santa’s sleigh have GPS?  I didn’t see one in the movie.

Child 2: Maybe Santa uses his iPad.

Child 1: Mrs. Meeuwse, does Santa have an iPad?

Me: Um, hmmm….Well, I guess he does.  I don’t really know for sure.

Child 2:  Can’t you Google it? (I did Google it and they were pleased to see the photo inserted above as it has a place for his iPod in the sleigh.  Even Santa can’t be without his iTunes.)

Child 1: If he does have one, he can just use the map app to find my house, right? That’s probably where he keeps his Christmas list.

Christmas 2.0 is very different from my experiences growing up.  Technology has infiltrated even our most magical of life’s experiences.  While I love my technology, my iPhone, my iPad, my MacBook, I find myself torn at what appears to be the loss of some holiday magic.  I remember tiptoeing into my living room as a 5 year old child and seeing that Santa had come.  The tinsel on the tree sparkling with the lights…I just accepted that Santa had come and didn’t question his ability to fly around the world and deliver presents.  I loved hearing my dad read Twas the Night Before Christmas and being allowed to open one present on Christmas Eve. (Which was usually pajamas.)  My southern upbringing left me thinking that Santa said, “Dash away! Dash away! Dash away, y’all.”

While I am grateful for all of the wonderful advantages of technology in our classroom, I would like to keep Christmas old school…unless Santa would like to bring me one of those robot vacuum cleaners…I mean, I have been very good this year. Ho, Ho, Ho!

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