Why not update the kitchen?

The first thing everyone says when looking for a house is either "too bad the kitchen needs updated" or "its great, the whole kitchen has been updated"  Maybe there is something wrong with me.  The modern kitchens are either steel and rock--cold, hard, impersonal, or a cheesy knock-off of grandmas kitchen from my childhood.  Its cheesy, because it has the same lines as the steel and rock, and is just as cold and impersonal as the commercial wanna-be.
I miss grandma's kitchen.  The old, rounded corners on the white enamel gas stove.  The deco emblem.  The sound of a match striking to light it up.  Add to that the kitchen table, chrome and formica in some mock-rock pattern, and vinyl seats and backs that sort of matched it.  The cabinets were also enamel, but the same homeliness was also present when the cabinets were carpentered in the house by the local woodworker.  Floors were linoleum or wood or occasionally varnished brick.  Rag rugs were thrown in front of the cast-iron sink and the stove.  A round and white refrigerator occupied a space that was obviously never intended to house such a thing and it hummed or chugged depending on whether it ran on propane or electricity.  The fridge has never lasted as long as the other appliances.
In the morning, everyone parked at that table in various stages of wakefulness, the coffee percolating, the smell of toasting bread and frying bacon.   We complain about the end of the  family dining together, eating and talking and breaking bread, but such a thing is hooked to the heart of the house and a cold and impersonal kitchen that looks just like a miniature restaurant kitchen has no heart. It will never nurture the soul  as it nourishes the body.  It can not be made to look comfortable.  At best, some stuff will be added--"decor" in an attempt to make it look more homey.
I think this new need to make everything look like it belongs to a rich family is a strange exercise in self-delusion.  A 100,000$ home with top of the line steel appliances and granite countertops is not a sign of affluence, it is just one more attempt to keep up with the
Jones', not the neighborhood Jones', the filthy-rich Jones' whose house was featured on the Parade of Homes with estimated worth of 2.5 million in a town where you can get a bungalow for under a hundred thousand that is over 1500 square feet..  What most older homes have is character, and removing that and replacing it with overpriced items seen on the many house-fixing shows (those are basically reality shows, and not nearly as helpful to the person redoing their own house as a trip to the internet and a u-tube of caulking the tub or installing a new doorknob.  New is good, old is bad.  It doesn't matter if it works, it doesn't matter if you like it, all that matters is if it all looks new.
So don't gut the soul of your home.  Clean it if its dirty, change the curtains to colors from this century, or take it back to its original new-time (ebay is fun for that, the search is on) or take it back to the time of your grandma's house when you loved it the most.  Replace what is broken with something functional and similar, love it, use it, laugh and cry in it, but don't try to make it something it was never meant to be.
It will thank you for this as you would when you are trying to figure out why you no longer enjoy your kitchen rituals nearly as much, but I just saved you from that.