Christmas Day in a care home is often thought to be the saddest shift of the year: a place where staff trudge in reluctantly through the dark and cold, while the rest of the country unwraps presents and gets merry; where residents sit quietly, reminiscing about the happiness of Christmases past.
And yet, for those of us who work these shifts year after year, that idea bears little resemblance to the truth. It is, strangely, one of the most joyous shifts to work. There is grief and gratitude, absence and presence, memory and forgetfulness, and moments of surprising hilarity. Someone will say something outrageous. Someone will fall asleep halfway through pudding. Someone will insist they have already had lunch or get away with having two.
Care home Christmases are more traditional. It often feels like a household in the original sense of the word. A place where people are gathered under one roof, bound not by choice or background, but by circumstance. The vulnerable are taken in. The able muck in. There is no question of who should or shouldn’t be there.
In my care home, staff rotate each year between working Christmas Day and Boxing Day. But there are always those who volunteer for more. Some have no family of their own. Some are bereaved. Some simply say, without drama, that they don’t mind working the shift. In my experience, the staff’s happiness is infectious.
It is real joy. Not the frenzy of presents and parties, but a quieter, steadier joy that comes from small things done with care: a staff member painting someone’s nails in festive red; a carer who has worked seven Christmases in a row and still brings in mince pies she’s baked herself; or a carer who retired two years ago but still comes in to put up our Christmas decorations – something she has done for 20 years. A resident who hardly speaks due to dementia suddenly joins in the chorus of ‘Silent Night’, as if they were back at a carol service.
The phones don’t ring. No emails come in. Therapy services don’t visit. Deliveries pause. The quiet of Christmas Day feels set apart from other days of the year. For most residents, this is not their first Christmas away from their families – it is their fifth or even tenth. Many no longer remember their childhood Christmases, but they remember little moments. They speak of oranges in stockings, coal fires, baking cakes and bread over a whole morning, and the thrill of seeing snow that wasn’t forecast on the wireless.
Christmas can be emotionally complicated in a care home. It is the time of year when absences are truly felt. There are family members who no longer visit or who can’t. Carers often have to put aside their jolliness and instead become a voice of reassurance, sensitivity and steadiness (it’s comfort and joy, after all).
It is, strangely, one of the most joyous shifts to work
Staff have their own way of navigating the day. They miss their own families, of course, but they also know that they are the closest thing to family for many residents. There is no room for self-pity when someone is waiting to be washed and dressed or helped to the toilet. There is an unspoken choreography: one carer making tea, another adjusting a paper hat, another reading out cracker jokes that are otherwise too small to read. The routines continue, softened by reindeer ears, Christmas jumpers, and the smell of turkey that the night staff put in the oven at four in the morning.
There is something faintly radical about this kind of Christmas. It is a day organised around care rather than consumption. People are valued not for what they bring, but for the simple fact that they are there. In a culture obsessed with independence and abundance, Christmas in a care home insists on interdependence and imperfection. Last Christmas, as I walked through the lounge in the early evening, people were napping, the remote had been found, and something played low on the television. After the tension and build-up to the big day, it felt like a job well done. Christmas really means something in a care home.
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