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Christmas 100 years in the future will be celebrated, but the changes will be immense.
Little Johnny will not covet a railroad train. The lad in the next century will want a model of the latest starship in his Christmas stocking. He will expect a working one, too, that will sail through the air like a live bird.
There will be dolls as large as little girls who will receive them. And there will be dolls that can walk, and through improved phonographic arrangements of another century, there will be dolls that can talk and sing.
The mechanical toys of 2009 will be marvels of perfection. The most imaginative man cannot possibly conceive of the new things that will be invented in the way of machinery, b ut it is safe to assume that the wireless transmission of power will be perfected.
The Christmas tree 100 years from now will be an electrical marvel. Festoons and wreaths of rainbow colored lights and “chasers” will scintillate from its green branches. But the presents that hang on it will be even more wonderful.
After eating your Christmas dinner in 2009, the dishes will disappear and there will be some sort of mechanical dishwasher in the kitchen to take care of them. Or the dishes may be made of cheap composite and will be destroyed by burning after they have been used once.
One hundred years from now, if you want to avoid the rush and do your shopping in your own home, the scientists probably will have provided you with a combination of telescope and moving picture machine by means of which you can connect your room with the toy department and see the display by wire – or perhaps even wireless – and at the same time you get prices and leave your order with the clerk by telephone.
– From the 1909 newspaper of The Kentucky Advocate, republished December 20, 2009

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