“Our Unusual Christmas Day”

From Yahoo features
http://uk.lifestyle.yahoo.com/%E2%80%9Cour-unusual-christmas-day%E2%80%9D.html

By Natalie Blenford – Tue, Dec 13, 2011 18:23 GMT

Forget turkey and all the trimmings at three o’clock: four people tell us about their unusual plans for Christmas day.

The nurse

Chloë Gillen, 23, is a Staff Nurse in the Parrot Ward at Great Ormond Street hospital in London. She’ll be working from 7.30am to 8.30pm on Christmas day, and has worked on Christmas day for the past two years

“I’ll be looking after sick children at Great Ormond Street”

“I’ll get up at 6am on Christmas day and slip out of my house in South-East London before any of my family are awake. I’ll drive to Great Ormond Street, park the car and be on the Ward by 7.30am.

The children in my ward are being treated for neurological conditions such as brain tumours and some of them are terminally ill, but there’s always a festive atmosphere on Christmas day. Last year, the Fire Brigade came down with toys; a choir popped in to sing carols and the consultants brought their kids into the hospital too. Loads of relatives come down to celebrate with their children, so it will definitely be a full-house!

I help give Christmas stockings out at 8am – we make one for every child – and we help them unwrap their presents. We never do planned surgery on Christmas day, but last year there were a few emergency operations, and if this happens again, I’ll spend most of my shift giving antibiotics intravenously and monitoring post-operative patients. It can be busy and very intense.

I’ll grab a 45-minute lunch break anytime between one and six o’clock. The canteen lays on a Christmas buffet and we get a free voucher so we don’t have to pay, but it’s not as nice as a home-cooked dinner! The last hour of my shift will be spent writing reports, and then I’ll say goodbye to the kids at 8.30pm.

I’ll be home by 9pm, and usually my family is still sitting at the table eating Christmas dinner as they don’t start until 7.30pm. There are 15 people coming over to my parent’s house this year, including my boyfriend, so I’ll grab a plate of food, heat it up and join them.

My mum will start fussing over me, making sure I’ve got enough to eat, and then we’ll open presents. They wait all day to open theirs so we can all do it together, which is very sweet. I’m usually exhausted and will fall asleep on the sofa by 11pm. I’ll have worked 40 hours in three days by Christmas night, so I’m looking forward to Boxing Day which I have off!

My Christmas is definitely unusual, but it gives me a lot of perspective on my own life. I see other people’s reality, which makes me feel lucky. And my family are so proud of me for working in this job, which is really rewarding too.”

The non-Christian family

Esti and David Cook live in Hertfordshire with their three children, Elliot, 18, Shelley, 16 and Joel, 12. Because they’re Jewish, they don’t celebrate Christmas, although they borrow some of the more fun traditions…

“We’ll be lighting Chanukah candles before having Christmas lunch”

Esti says: “We’re a Jewish family and I’ve got my son’s Barmitzvah next year, so we don’t make a big deal out of Christmas, but we get together as a family and enjoy a festive meal.

My brother and his children come over to our house, we have an indulgent gathering with lots of wine, crackers and lovely food.

We like the romanticism of Christmas – the lights, the cards – but we don’t wake up on Christmas morning and say ‘happy Christmas everybody!’

The Jewish festival of Chanukah lasts for eight days and this year it coincides with Christmas, so we’ll light Chanukah candles before we sit down for dinner, once it gets dark. We’ll sing a special Chanukah song, and then maybe Shelley will get a present!

After dinner, we’ll take the dog for a walk and then watch Eastenders, Downton Abbey and all the other Christmas specials. Then we’ll all crawl up to bed about 11pm.

From a religious point of view, the day means nothing to us, but we live in England which is a Christian country, so of course we’re going to join in a little bit. As Shelley says, Christmas is everywhere so we just embrace it.”

Shelley says: “This year, I’ll wake up at 9am and run into my parent’s room to see if they’ve got me a present. I usually get my presents for Chanukah instead – but this year the two festivals coincide day so I’m hoping mum and dad will make an exception!

We’ll watch TV and have a big Christmas breakfast of eggs, sausages and muffins, then I’ll lay the table very nicely with Christmas crackers. I love crackers, and I’m sure that’s the one thing that that every single family has.

We’ll have dinner – maybe a kosher turkey, or salmon with roast potatoes, and then we’ll watch more TV.

I do feel envious of people who celebrate Christmas properly – it’s a nice thing to do, it’s cute. I like everything to do with Christmas. I love the decorations, lights and family time. I do Secret Santa with my Jewish girl friends and I really want a tree in my room!

Overall, I think Christmas has an effect on everyone, irrespective of whether you are religious. There’s always the Christmas spirit around.”

The volunteer

Charlotte Blyth, 37, a practise manager from Crystal Palace, will be volunteering for Crisis, the national charity for single homeless people, on Christmas day. She manages the Crisis at Christmas centre at Deptford Reach in South-East London and will welcome approximately 120 guests on Christmas day.

“I’ll be making Christmas Day special for 120 homeless people”

“I’ve volunteered with Crisis at Christmas for the past ten years and I always work on December 25th. I’m up at 5.30am and at the centre by 7am, and I manage a team of 35 volunteers. My day starts with a team briefing at 7am. A lot of the volunteers are first-timers, so I explain that we can have anything from 15 to 120 guests coming to the centre, and that it’s our job to give them a special Christmas experience.

After the briefing, we get to work. We cook breakfast, buy newspapers, open the IT suite, set up the arts and crafts areas and get the Bingo ready. The first guests arrive at 8am, and our visiting experts come shortly afterwards. We have doctors, masseuses, hairdressers, piano players and choirs – they all donate their time to make our guests feel special.

At 12.30, we start cooking lunch. Crisis goes through 4,000 loaves of bread over the Christmas period – there is a lot of cooking to do! My shift finishes at 3pm, and I spend the next hour handing over to the night manager and doing a de-brief.

If I’m not too tired, I’ll drive out to Hertfordshire to see my dad and my sisters for the evening, but often I just go home to Crystal Palace and collapse. Volunteers are too busy to think about giving each other presents on Christmas day, but we do have a big get-together after Christmas where we celebrate properly.

I work at Crisis every day from 22nd to 30th December – I take annual leave from my job to be able to do this. But I don’t see it as a sacrifice at all.

I’m not the sort of person who can sit down and eat a box of chocolates and watch Eastenders – that’s not me. Christmas is about giving and the best thing you can give is your time. Honestly, this is the most rewarding job in the world and I’d miss it so much if I didn’t do it every year.”