Paul Hopkins: A digital Christmas won’t replace a human touch
Even at its best, Christmas can be a time of mixed feelings: the desire to spend time with kith and kin, coupled with the angst of being too close to family for too long a period and of Great Aunt Mary, one glass of port too many, falling face first into the sherry trifle. You get my drift.
This tradition of family gathering to mark the passing of yet another year is deeply embedded in our culture. Most of our social connections rely on a sense of reciprocity that brings mutual benefits. In times past, long, long ago, we might have shared our food with allies during times of scarcity in the knowledge that they would do the same for us, the balance of give and take being essential for our very survival.
For family, however, we have an additional motivation for altruism, arising from an evolutionary process known as ‘kin selection’. This theory, popularised in Richard Dawkin’s book The Selfish Gene, centres on the fact that our close relatives – our siblings, nieces, nephews and grandchildren – share many of our genes. By aiding our nearest kin, we therefore protect part of our genetic lineage.
In effect, we have evolved to care more about family than friends, even if we share little in common apart from our genes. According to research at Oxford University, this ‘kinship premium’ is also evident in more regular displays of devotion, such as the distance we are willing to travel to see someone, to invest in a long drive, train journey or flight, nowhere more evident than at Christmas. We are willing to ‘go the extra mile’ if it means spending time with the people who share our genes, even if we might have actually have more fun with our friends at home or abroad.
No time more than at the close of a year does our evolved instinct to maintain our family relationships pull us together, despite our different opinions on, say, politics or the best way to dress the turkey. And the family network is so tightly entwined that you can’t simply avoid the most annoying family members. You can choose your friends but not your family.
Confronting those ‘awkward family differences’ may be stressful but, from an evolutionary point, it is the act of turning up and showing our continued investment in these bonds that really matters.
How many of us can ‘turn up’, can travel far and near, and how many in numbers can actually spend time with each other this Christmas is a matter of conjecture as the Government tackles with how much ‘social distancing’ can be relaxed for the annual holiday, measured against the best advice of scientists and/or the interests of the hospitality industry, to give just one example.
Will we be able to gather with extended family and friends in the local on Christmas Eve; will Great Aunt Mary, alas, spend Christmas Day alone, fiercely hanging on to her bottle of Sandeman?
This Christmas may well prove to be like no other Christmas – ever – in memory or enhanced recall. It may very well turn out to be the Christmas of coming together, near and far, through the world of social media and its ilk, Zooming in and out of each other’s company with no chance for touch and tactility, those very traits that define us as human.
Arguably, Covid-19 has shown the positive side of social media and the way it has become increasingly central to the public dissemination and discussion of vital information about the pandemic. It has also seen a huge increase in our use of such in our day-to-day dealings with one another, at work and at play.
One of the more positive responses has been the fast reaction of so many people with technical (and other) skills who, across Ireland and the world, have come together with initiatives to help frontline workers and scientists – and the rest of us seeking ways to cope – at a time of serious need.
But for most of us mere mortals, stuck at home during the pandemic, with cinema or concerts a non-event and no restaurant or pub to enjoy, spending our lives online has become the new reality, Christmas shopping and all.
Somehow, the need to hug my two grown-up sons, living out their lives in America, has never seemed more urgent. This Christmas, if nothing else, may well prove a poignant reminder of our real need for one another’s embrace.
Read Paul Hopkins' column every Tuesday in the paper