The winds of winter whipped around our car one Christmas decades ago as we traveled to visit family. The gas gauge edged toward empty. We saw one darkened station after another. Silent anxiety filled the car until a well lit station welcomed us. Gratefully, we pulled up to a pump. Since this happened before self service gas stations, an attendant strolled up to the window and asked, “Ethel or regular? How much? Do you need your oil checked?”
“Fill it up with regular,” my husband said.
We could have stayed warm and dry in the car, except all the kids needed a break. As the gas flowed, my husband chatted with the woman washing the windshield, “We thought we would run out of gas before we saw your lights. Everyone else is closed for Christmas. Why aren’t you? Don’t you want to be home with your family?”
She reached across the car to swipe the road grime off the windshield before she answered, “Home with the family? My whole family is here today. This is how we are spending Christmas.”
We thanked her for the gift of time on the one day when most want to stay home.
That was then, this is now and still Somebody has to work during the holidays while friends and family feast, open presents and attend parties. To all those Somebodies out there: Thank You. Your time of service made this year’s holiday possible.
First, a thanks to all the first responders: the hard working men and women we never want to see and especially so from Christmas to New Years. While others party, police officers and county sheriffs clock in hoping to spend a boring shift just cruising the streets. At the Emergency Room, EMTS check their supplies and pray that no one desperately needs their services. While kids pull out the fire crackers and sparklers, firemen check their equipment, clean the truck and remind folks to remember the safety rules.
Second, a thanks for those whose company or institution must be staffed 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. In other words places such as hospitals and nursing homes where disease, disability or the symptoms of age require supervision and assistance through the night and day. Or a factory that needs a crew to keep them running without stopping.
Before I retired as a newspaper reporter, more than one holiday I unlocked the empty office to sit in a stone quiet office and write a story, download a picture to the computer or lay out pages. While others prepared to party, I heard the printing crew enter the press room to prepare the press to print. A skeleton crew suffices for some departments at the newspaper, but not for deliveries. Every carrier must come every night, pick up their papers and drive through the county delivering papers before the sun rises even if it is a holiday break for their customers.
Third, a huge note of appreciation to the retail workers of the past six weeks: the clerks and stockers who dealt with a welcome increase of customers looking for the perfect gift or sought favorite holiday foods. Hundreds of department store and grocery store employees have kept the shelves stocked, the shopping cars corralled, the aisles tidy and the cash registers open. As shoppers, we contend with the crowds and can leave as soon as we finish or get tired. The store employees must return each day for a month-long marathon of holiday shoppers.
To all of these, and many others unmentioned, thank you for making our holiday bright.