That cold and dark day, Grandpa woke up with sadness, he remembered his Christmas 40 years ago; they worshipped a Child Jesus that humanity no longer even names him, since they discovered that extraterrestrial life placed us here so many millions of years ago, as an experiment, to evaluate how long we would be able to advance technologically to what they are. Faith was lost, churches and religions were destroyed. For Grandpa Christmas is meaningless now.
His children and grandchildren don't even listen to him anymore. Technology consumed their lives that look like robots as much as they do for cleaning their homes and other activities. They don't show their feelings. As he longed for those years when he took his young children to listen to the choirs of the children singing beautiful Christmas carols.
Today, December 25,2050, he knew it would be like last year. His sons and daughters would come with their wives and husbands, grandchildren and great-grandchildren and the house would be filled with people, but in spite of everything, he would feel so empty, because even the youngest would be playing with those things that he didn't understand; they seemed crazy fighting with ghosts and jumping, with huge glasses on their faces.
But his children today would surprise him. They already knew that the old man was tired and wanted to rest, leave and become part of the energy of the Universe. Since his partner died, he wasn't the same and had a hard time adapting to that robotic world.
The grown-ups remembered a little bit about Christmas so they worked hard and for a while were teaching their grandchildren how to sing those songs their father loved so much. Now the way to learn was much easier than before. Everything was solved by looking at a screen with multiple algorithms that formed images, colors with movements and sound, that if we saw them fixedly for a few minutes emitted a signal to the brain and it absorbed and decoded all the information without noticing. In this way you could learn languages, art, sports, engineering, music, in short, any specialty.
You could make the food you want in a matter of minutes, putting the ingredients in a machine and programming it. So that Christmas night everyone came together to make Grandpa feel special (as her grandchildren and great-grandchildren called her). For one night to make him feel that time has receded.
They dressed in old clothes, bought presents, put on the table a spectacular Christmas dinner that had nothing to envy in those glory years of the old man. The children sang Christmas carols after that divine supper. They heard their Grandfather tell those funny stories of her youth and for one day, after so much longing, the sad 90-year-old Grandfather was again immensely happy.
Outside the darkness reigned, our Sun was already going out, they calculated about 30 years of life to our Planet, the cold became more and more intense every night. They all had their tickets bought to leave Earth after New Year's Eve. By 2051 the Earth would be desolate, only robots would be left to record what would happen on the Final Day and transmit every last detail to robotic scientists. Soon they would be crossing the wormhole to reach the new planet already inhabited by some humans.
But today was Christmas and the old man was happy with his big, beautiful family and that's what mattered at the time. He got the best gift of his life. He felt respected and loved once again.