My daily life depends on Russian dolls of technology, factories to build the things that move the things around the world from all their home factories. A push of a plastic button when a glass screen glows just right. Then things fly into motion.
How important is the thing I saw the picture of on the glowing screen? It doesn’t matter. Clothes, car parts, throw pillows with memes on them, the orders are taken without judgment. The people and machines move them without judgement to where they are desired and consumed. Most of us manage to forget this, to be like my kids who don’t question the toy at hand. Until it disappears under the couch. Or it gets left behind in a move.
The fun fades in a way when I think of the dangerous factory halfway around the world where my kids’ toys come from. And nearly all the objects I own. But then it’s like a fantastic story that we tell our kids, to lift their spirits in the dark days of midwinter. Has the truth surpassed the fairy tale? My son certainly didn’t light up in wonder when I tried to explain Santa, his elves, his workshop. How impossibly far away it is. How impossibly organized Santa must be to get all the toys to the right kids. Truth is stranger than fiction. Sometime in my lifetime, the reality of Christmas surpassed the story of Santa. At least in the wealthier countries.
Is this reality more magical? More compelling? In a way. But there’s no naughty or nice list when it comes to getting our toys in this world. Just money and means, desire and satisfaction.
My father-in-law got coal one Christmas. He won’t say why. People get plenty upset about indiscriminate supply chain problems, but imagine if we got what someone else thought we deserved. That would be a wild recession.