A Christmas Carol

I fancy myself Mrs. Claus. I am Christmas incarnate. I get so excited the months (yes months) leading up to Christmas and I am that person who listens to carols starting the day after Thanksgiving. This year I sent out save-the-date evites to my annual holiday party in October. And the lists, oh the lists! I make a list of everyone I want to buy a gift for. Then, under each person I list their hobbies and interests to give me an idea of the perfect present for each person. I make a list of  holiday recipes I must try. I hover over and modify my lists daily. In this manner I find the greatest pleasure the holidays bring me-coming up with clever ways to spread cheer. 

This week I took my family to see a beloved production of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. It is my favorite Christmas story- for me Fred sums up the meaning of Christmas when he says, "I have always thought of Christmas time as a good time. A kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time. It's the only time I know of in the long calendar of the year when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on their journeys. And though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good, and I say God bless it!" 

When I'm at the hospital and I begin thinking about Christmas and my lists, it makes me take pause. Eventually, my shift will end and I will get to go home and be with my family and run errands and check off boxes on my lists. But my patients will still be here. 

I had cared for a patient who was supposed to be returning to the nursing home from whence she came. She couldn't speak because she had a trach, but she could nod. I asked her if she was glad to be getting out of the hospital and she told me she was not. She preferred the hospital room she was in because staff came in her room more often for various reasons. 

These are my fellow passengers to the grave and what if, one day, it's me in the hospital, looking forward to a nurse coming into my room just to have some human interaction. 

So perhaps it's not about parties and presents and revelry. It's about spreading kindness and cheer in any large or small way. Who knows what small gesture can mean a great deal to someone.