by Ryan C Christiansen
Columnist
This past Saturday, our family celebrated a Jewish holiday.
Well, sort of.
We celebrated Shabbat, more commonly known as The Sabbath, which is a Jewish day of rest celebrated each week from sundown Friday night through nightfall Saturday. We didn’t partake in any Shabbat rituals, however. We’re not Jewish. And we didn’t even know that we were celebrating The Sabbath. What we observed was the National Day of Unplugging, a little-known event held this year from sundown Friday, March 1, through sundown Saturday, March 2.
According to the Reboot network, which organized the event, the National Day of Unplugging was a necessary occasion to observe, because when we spend our free time looking at a screen and recording everything that we do to Facebook or Twitter, we miss out on the important moments in our lives.
I say that we observed a Jewish holiday on Saturday because the event’s organizer, Reboot, is an organization that seeks to help Jews achieve an identity in an ever-changing world. The organization is trying to help Jews “‘reboot’ inherited tradition” to make it meaningful in today’s world. By renaming one Shabbat to the National Day of Unplugging, they can help Jews to find a way to observe The Sabbath after all. The concept of “unplugging” is enticing, and based on anecdotal evidence, I’m guessing the event pulled in people from a lot of other religions, too.
Reboot also encourages people to observe The Sabbath weekly, and its Sabbath Manifesto asks you to observe Shabbat each Saturday by avoiding technology, connecting with loved ones, nurturing your health, getting outside, avoiding commerce, lighting candles, eating bread, finding silence, and giving back.
This past Saturday, we observed most of these ten principles, and we were better for it, but it wasn’t easy.
Even before my day started, I experienced the urge to use a screen. Most mornings before I get out of bed, I typically grab my Windows Phone or my Amazon Kindle Fire to check and see whether any of my friends had posted to Facebook overnight. I also check inforum.com to see what the headlines are for the day.
After I walk downstairs, I typically turn on the TV to watch Valley News Live while I eat breakfast and feed the kids. Most days, even before I head downstairs, our son can be found lying awake on the living room couch (he has always been an early riser), where he watches video game “walk-throughs” on his iPod Touch while he waits for us to get out of bed. On this particular morning, however, I found him lying on the couch half-awake and beneath a blanket. He was audibly groaning to express his dissatisfaction about having to observe the Day of Unplugging. He complained. “I’m bored,” he said. “I’m too grown up for toys. It’s not fair. You’re mean parents.”
In my Father-Knows-Best voice, I explained how life was for me during my childhood: I spent a lot of weekends and summers at my grandmother’s house, where she had one TV, and it was usually unplugged from the wall. When she did plug it in, she only received three channels, and I wasn’t interested in a large majority of the TV programming. And because we didn’t have video games or computers or anything but a landline, we played. We made forts out of furniture and blankets, we used box fans and folding chairs to make imaginary airplanes, and we played with toys. While I gave him my soliloquy, I watched our daughter play with toys on the other side of the room. She played with a set of Playmobil cowboys and Indians, the same set that I played with thirty years ago. She likes to be the Indians because they have the cool stuff like the painted ponies and the tepees, and they have a girl in the group.
The day got better. The kids spent their day playing with LEGO blocks or playing with friends down the street, where they built a tent city in the snow. We took our son and his friend to visit an indoor playground, and we played board games like Battleship. We also spent a lot of time reading. I’m now halfway through the 656-page biography of Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple.
Throughout the day, I noticed how I didn’t stop to look at the TV in the kitchen. I didn’t pick up my phone every twenty minutes to see whether I had received any new e-mail or to see if anyone had posted something to Facebook. I didn’t sit down at my computer to check the calendar on inforum.com to see what might be going on in the community on a Saturday, and I didn’t get sidetracked watching unmemorable-but-cutesy videos on YouTube.
And in the end, we broke our son’s preoccupation with video games, and we developed a new system for our kids: They must now earn screen time through play, reading, or activities. One hour earns them one hour of screen time, up to a maximum of two hours per day, and they can save them up. We use poker chips to keep track.
We enjoyed observing the National Day of Unplugging, our secular version of a Shabbat, and while we’re not Jewish, we appreciated what “unplugging” gave back to our lives. Many Christian faiths observe a weekly Sabbath day, too, of course, on Saturdays or Sundays, and it’s interesting to note that when Jews and others observe a Sabbath on a weekly basis, they do it to demonstrate that they are religiously reliable members of their faith communities.
Perhaps if we could all just unplug a little more, we’d all become more reliable members of our greater community, religion aside. And if it takes declaring a “Day of Unplugging” instead of using the term “Sabbath,” then I think that’s okay, too.