This was a little bonbon I wrote for the last page of the December issue of Electronic House magazine. There's a scanned version of the article online here, but in case you want to cut and paste a segment of the text, the original draft I sent to the editor is included below:

Merry Christmas, Captain; Live Long And Prosper In a way, home automation brings the future into our homes. We’re building the pushbutton future our parents and grandparents dreamed about. Meanwhile, we watch shows like Star Trek, and its various spin-offs, which try to predict what our future has in store. Since this is December, I wonder what Christmas will be like in the 23rd century.

Of course, trying to figure out the future based on contemporary trends is always risky. In 1966, Star Trek’s writers decided that miniskirts, go-go boots, and beehive hairdos would be the appearance of women serving in the military 300 years from now. So bear with me as I extrapolate like they did—although we might get a few things wrong, hopefully we’ll have some fun.

The Holographic Christmas Tree

When we remodeled our home last year, I specified an X10-controlled outlet in our living room specifically for the family tree. Press a button and—presto!—the Christmas tree lights up. Or it can be on the home automation timer. But that’s fairly simple technology--after all, X10 has been around since the late 1970s. But if that’s what we can do at the dawn of the 21st century, imagine what the family tree will be like in the Star Trek future.

Ideally, life won’t be so streamlined by then that we end up with nothing but metal poles in our living rooms instead of Christmas trees like Seinfeld’s Festivus ceremony. But who knows? Maybe instead of messy pine or artificial plastic trees, we’ll have holographic projections in our living rooms, complete with the smell of fresh cut pine. Press a button and change the decorations! Change the size of the tree! Change the colors of the electric train that circles its base!

Of course, Star Trek’s replicator will really change Christmas. How do you explain Santa Claus to a kid who can have any toy he wants at any time by speaking into a slot on his wall? Of course, responsible parents will probably dole out replicator use in small quantities, perhaps like allowances in today’s “stone knives and bear skins” era. But the replicator will certainly solve the “where to hide Christmas presents” problem.

Will Santa Beam In Tonight?

Or maybe kids will stay up late on Christmas Eve in hopes of catching a jolly bearded man in a red suit. (Oh no! Does that mean that Santa is a Federation security officer? He might not survive the opening credits!) They’ll expect him to punch his pass code into the family replicator to fill all of the holographic stockings hung above the matter/antimatter fireplace.

But what will happen to Santa’s reindeer? Will they still fly? Will they use warp drive or antigravity technology to fulfill all of Saint Nick’s tasks in one night? Will Santa trade them in on a speedy shuttlecraft? Or, if we all have transporter rooms in place of garages, will Santa merely beam himself from home to home?

Perhaps Santa will need a starship of his own: he may have to service not just the kids of Planet Earth, but also the rest of the galaxy. If so, will he use the same sort of dramatic pauses that William Shatner made famous as Captain Kirk? On…Prancer! On…Dancer! On…Rudolph! Ho…Ho…Ho…!

Of course, some things will never change: boys and girls will always have to worry about having dilithium crystals in their stockings if they’re bad.