My friend Tom Flynn always goes to work on Christmas Day as a matter of principle. At least when it falls on a work day. He’s a fierce advocate for Separation of Church and State and author of
The Trouble with Christmas.
He reminds me of another friend who doesn’t celebrate Christmas. She’s a Jehovah’s Witness.
Christmas ranks among the most important and busiest work days for many mainstream Christian clergy and their associates, of course. In similar spirit, volunteers all around the Christmas-celebrating world will serve Christmas dinner for folks who have no other place to go today.
There’s no Christmas break, naturally, for people hired to protect us: police, prison guards, soldiers, paramedics, fire fighters, doctors, nurses, and hospital staff. And those who serve us: waiters, transportation workers, and this year, maybe representatives working on health care legislation.
But most of us are off today. In fact, I learned that in the UK most large stores are prohibited from opening on Christmas Day by the Christmas Trading Act 2004. We school bus drivers get a good long holiday because schools are out for two full weeks. See you January 5th, Kids!
Everything to do with Information Technology works today. And that means IT professionals have to be on hand to make sure it works. We can get messages to each other today instantly. No one has to deliver them on foot. When someone asks a puzzling question at Christmas dinner, we can Cha Cha the answer. No one has to walk down to the library, which would be closed anyway, or pull out a volume of an encyclopedia, which might not have the answer.
The big idea behind IT, the one that scares survivalists, is to turn over to technology the tasks we don’t want to do. So that we can have more time to do the things we like to do. It doesn’t seem to be working that way, but that’s the idea anyway. Or part of it.
The thing is, we can’t stop inventing and improving information technology. It’s not enough to have thousands of our favorite songs on a wafer almost as thin as a bookmark. We want every song ever written, now, without having to carry a wafer. If you’re working on that today, take a break and smell the holly. Stand under the mistletoe. See what happens.
And to Tom Flynn and all the information technology workers fanning Google’s servers, Merry Christmas!
