Christmas is watched on television at least as much as it is actually lived, if not more.

The star in the East? That warm light in the heart? It’s high-def, beamed in, DVR’d. A pine-and-spice-scented candle can work its sensory magic, and the chestnuts are supposed to be roasting by an open fire, but pretty soon you have to face facts: The candle is a Glade PlugIn; the fireplace is controlled by a light switch; and the TV is on again, where Christmas always looks more like itself.

What do we do when we at last come together? We watch TV.

To some, this sounds tragic. Shouldn’t we be gathered around the piano instead of the Wii? Shouldn’t the TV be off while we enjoy one another’s company? Shouldn’t we, instead of watching football games and the umpteenth encore of “A Christmas Story,” be walking the cobblestone streets of our snowy neighborhoods, singing carols to our neighbors?

All that Christmas idealism is sustained by television. Everything we know about how Christmas should appear and feel, we learned from watching Christmas happen on TV to people who don’t exist. Have a look at the pretty, pretty trees in all those living rooms and in all those diamond necklace ads and in Hallmark specials. What’s the one thing missing from these people’s homes?

Correct: No TVs are on. The people we see on television at Christmastime have chosen to put their tree up in a formal living room, safely away from the television. You know them as well as you know your own family. He went to Jared! We bought you a Lexus with a giant red bow on it! And Peter’s made it home, just in time for Christmas morning, and he’s brewed a fresh pot of Folgers to rouse us from our slumber!

In fact, the people having those wonderful holidays on TV don’t need TVs. It’s as if they know how badly we need to watch what they’re doing (and how they’re doing it, and how happy they are), but they are fine without watching us. Only Best Buy and other home electronics purveyors would ever dream up commercials in which familial bliss is achieved with bigger and better TVs.

Which summons a real debate in some households. Should the tree actually be near the television? Or should it be erected safely away from all the secular distraction and crass commercialism that TV represents?

I happen to think the Christmas tree and the TV set should coexist almost as one, within feet of each other, so that you may look at both. It’s more honest that way.

The soothing blinking of the tree and the frantic flickering of a TV screen somehow form a visual duet, and create the true light of the modern American Christmas.