By Adam Stewart
From the Newsroom
Last week, I was interviewing people for a story about emergency responders working on the holidays, which you can find in this issue of The Tribune, and the people I talked to seemed to view it as less of a hardship than I expected.
I’ve worked on Christmas Day before, at The Morning News in Blackfoot, Idaho, and I didn’t like it one bit. But when 911 dispatcher Melissa McElheny talked about dispatchers having a potluck in the office for the holiday, that really helped me understand the difference.
Even though they aren’t with their families during their shift, those dispatchers are with one another, while the newsroom on Christmas Day 2007 was a lonely place. Patrol officers in both the police and sheriff’s departments don’t get that same office experience as the dispatchers, but if call volume allows, they are encouraged to get some time with their families.
And even with a 12-hour shift, it doesn’t take up the entire holiday. They can spend time with their families before and after their shifts, which wasn’t possible when I was in Blackfoot, 1,100 miles away from family, fresh out of college.
It wasn’t working on the holiday that bothered me so much; it was missing the people that mattered to me. Since that interview, I’ve had folks for whom Christmas can be a difficult time on my mind. Christmas is meaningful to many people, which means it can be painful for a variety of reasons. It isn’t unusual for someone grieving the loss of a loved one to feel it especially acutely the first Christmas without them.
Others may have pain associated with the holiday that persists from year to year, or feel like they don’t live up to expectations or standards—theirs or others’—for the Christmas season. There are more ways that Christmas can be difficult for folks than can fit in this column. None of them are wrong. It isn’t a failure to be stressed, or grieving, or lonely at Christmas. If you’re one of those people, I hope you are being kind to yourself this season.
And thank you to the emergency responders, spending time away from their loved ones on Christmas so someone else will still have their loved ones next Christmas.
Adam Stewart is the assistant news editor of The Hutchinson Tribune. He can be reached at adam@hutchtribune.com.