The Louisville Courier-Journal
Jeanne Hilt - Interviewed by Katya Cengel
December 2005
USA

Christmas morning for Libby Simpson once meant a stocking filled with peanuts and a doll named Buster. At least that's what she remembers of her childhood in Versailles, Ky.

At 101, some details escape the resident of Twinbrook Nursing Home in Louisville, but the basics remain. There were stockings, a turkey and toys that sometimes resulted in her -- and her five younger siblings -- heading outdoors to play. One year, when she was about 13, Santa Claus brought her and her boyfriend a bike built for two, which, as best she remembers, the pair spent the morning riding.

Things are a bit different at Deanna Payton's home. The presents she and boyfriend Kenny Johnson buy their four children, two 9-year-old girls and 10- and 11-year old boys, usually don't require going outside or even playing with friends. Instead they involve popping a cartridge in a machine. Xbox and PlayStation games have taken over the family's Christmas.

"They want them more than anything," said Payton.

And as soon as they get the devices, they are glued to them for the rest of the morning, an occurrence that happens in more than just Payton's family. Jay Hill, assistant manager at KB Toys in Mall St. Matthews, said video games top many children's Christmas lists. It is the same at the nearby Best Buy across Shelbyville Road.

"Everything is just revolving around technology now," said Molly Fachinger, store media specialist. "It's not bikes and dolls, it's Xbox 360 and that's it."

While Marsha Jasper of Smithfield says her 8-year-old son Edward has asked for a PlayStation, she doesn't expect such a gift would monopolize his time.

"I think he'll play video games for a while, it will wear off, and he'll be out there playing again."

It's that outside time that older generations remember about Christmas. The image of children ripping open presents and running outside to bounce new basketballs, ride shiny bikes, and, if the weather was right, race down the hill on a sled seems to be slipping away.

"You received a red sled, you went out and played with your buddies with it," said John Gallehr, a psychiatrist and pediatrician at Our Lady of Peace Hospital. "You receive a hand-held electronic device, you sit (inside), and there is no interaction."

Gallehr said it is clear children are a lot more sedentary, not just on Christmas morning, but throughout the year, and some of the causes of this are the toys they play with, including video games.

"I think we need to turn those things off so they can get back to doing the football and Frisbee," he said.

The technology invasion has taken over more than just the way children play with their toys.

It has changed the way they interact with their families, said Gallehr, who has heard many parents blame the competitive and often violent nature of video games for their children's irritability and bad behavior. Parents also blame video games for taking away from family time.

"A lot of families complain when it is time to sit down for Christmas dinner, the child wouldn't leave the Xbox or Sony PlayStation to engage with the family," he said.

The concerns, said Gallehr, aren't that different from those voiced half a century ago, when televisions began becoming commonplace in homes.

"It just seems each generation is spending more and more time with electronic devices and less time face to face with each other," he said.

It is clear that Christmas day has changed, but did that perfect morning when children woke up to new bikes and went riding down the street ever really exist?

Not for everyone. Michael Cunningham, a communications professor at the University of Louisville, certainly never had it.

In Minnesota, where he grew up, Cunningham said it was usually too cold to spend time outdoors, even to sled. Biking in the snow and ice was out of the question. So was playing with many of the other outdoor toys he got for Christmas.

He had to settle for second-best, which sometimes meant putting on his new football helmet and butting it against people in the warmth of his home -- little different from how his sons, 11 and 17, spend the day.

"Putting songs into an iPod is not the same as playing cowboy and Indians," Cunningham said. "But it also doesn't promote violence and ethnic stereotypes, so it's better."

And it doesn't always take over the day.

Jeanne Hilt of Prospect said her two sons, 12 and 16, probably would be playing board games with their parents and not video games.

"Sitting around the table playing 'Apples to Apples' (a game of comparisons) is as much a part of our Christmas as PlayStation," Hilt said. "It's a bit old-fashioned and traditional, but my kids love it."

And there are other traditions that children, despite technological advances, still seem to embrace. As a child, Libby Simpson's favorite thing about Christmas was her stocking. While what is inside that stocking has changed in the 90 years since she was young, the stocking tradition has stuck -- and so have many others.

"Children still have trouble sleeping the night before, and people still get things they can't figure out," said James Beggan, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Louisville.

"Fifty years ago it might be putting together a bike -- now it's a PlayStation."

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