Experiencing the Holiday in a Different Context
Clicking on this blog, you may be anticipating a post documenting my experience celebrating my first Christmas away from home. And, sure, this will be some of that, because I can only filter my thoughts and observations through my own perspectives and lived experience. But to focus entirely on that story is boring and frankly unimportant, in my opinion.
It would be self-indulgent to sit here and type sentence after sentence about how the day came and passed for me. Because, next year, I will be back at home, surrounding by my family, my traditions, my home, and my normal. I can make a fairly accurate prediction of what transpired on Christmas day back in Ohio without having been there. And, with some certainty, I can expect those same events to take place next year when return.
This Christmas was different though. And, it wasn't just different for me – being in a foreign country and joining in on all new traditions and customs. It was different for the people around me too. The people who were not 5,222 miles away from their homes. But, they also were not celebrating how they usually do, or where, or with whom. And maybe for the next few years, this is part of their celebration, but in the joy in having the community from the family rooms, there is also a grief in having to be there in the first place.
Room Parties
During the two weeks leading up to Christmas, all of the hospital family rooms had their own Christmas celebrations planned for the families that frequent their spaces. On Christmas Day, besides the Family House in Valparaiso, all of these rooms would be closed, as all businesses are shut down on Christmas in Chile.
Prior to the events, the room assistants were asked to put together a list of families with children who were currently doing relatively well. This made up the invite list.
Not every family could be invited to take part in the celebration. The stability of the child’s health really determined if their family join in on the festivities or would celebrate in a different capacity. This is because it was a party for the whole family, including the child. If the child was sick in the ICU, so weak from active cancer treatment that they couldn’t leave their bed, or on the decline to the point that when the list was created their expected status in a couple of weeks was unable to be determined, they couldn’t be added to the list because the most probable result would be that they could not attend.
The parties themselves were very lively gatherings, but varied from location to location and matched the energy of the room, the assistants, and the families. One had Zumba dancing, a magic show, a visit from the Grinch, and a rowdy game of balloon dodgeball. Another featured a special performance of a chinchinero. Another had the biggest dessert buffet I have ever seen. Another had a band of clowns in funky outfits passing out presents. At the transplant and oncology center, 40+ gifts were wrapped up and handed out to children who came by during the hospital-center-wide Christmas party featuring gifts and celebration from a number of organizations that work in the space.
Each celebration did have a few things in common. Every child (including all of their siblings who came) got a personalized gift and every parent got a present to take home, too. Santa made sure to fit a visit to each party into his busy schedule. The parties maintained normal Chilean Christmas traditions, with applause as each person got their gift (of course, after indicating how they were at that age [as a means of referring to the year]), chanting to see what was contained inside of the decorative wrapping, and opening up the toys right after to play with them.
From the outside looking in, these parties felt very typical from I heard about most child-centered Christmas celebrations. Without context, these could have been club gatherings or elementary school parties (expect that it is summer break during Christmas time in Chile). The invited kids, despite their portable oxygen tanks, feeding tubes, wheelchairs, or bald heads, in this setting, were just kids, excited about Christmas and enjoying tables of food, friends to play with, and free balloons to toss around as they pleased. There was so much normalcy to these celebrations that it was easy to forget about the backdrop where these parties were taking place. On the campus of hospitals. Where all of these children were being treated for acute or chronic illnesses that required lengthy appointments and hospitalizations, leading the parents to become acquainted with La Fundación Para La Infancia Ronald McDonald in the first place.
When you zoom out and can see that picture, you can see why the parents might have been extra eager to take a picture of their child posing with Santa or why one mom quietly wiped a tear when her child ran up to get a gift. You can see why one mother still came to the party to get the gift for her child that was invited but ended up being hospitalized just a few hundred feet away the day of the celebration. She even stood up to speak - thanking everyone for all they do and the thought behind putting on such an event for their kids, who go through a lot, saying that her child would have had a wonderful time if they were well enough to have joined.
You can see the gratitude and grief of the parents when they insisted on staying behind after the festivities ended to help clean up because, to them, the family room is their “second home” and it feels natural and right to take care of it just how it has taken care of them.
Family house
The Events
As I mentioned in previous posts, I spent Christmas at the foundation’s family house in Valparaiso. I arrived the afternoon of December 23rd and left the afternoon of December 26th. This also allowed me the opportunity to experience a bit of what it was like for the families to stay at the house for myself. In the background of my arrival though, in a neighboring area, there were devastating fires that were leaving houses destroyed, families displaced, and unfortunately killed a few people, all in the days leading up to Christmas. In talking with the house assistants, I asked about the fires, since we don’t really get forest fires in Ohio. They told me that basically every year around Christmas there are fires in the area, but not always to this magnitude.
Thinking about this, and if it were to occur in the US, I could picture campaigns and groups organizing to ship in Christmas dinners to the emergency shelters and new presents for the kids to replace the ones that were lost in the flames. I could imagine the emphasis on Christmas around the loss. But, I was surprised to notice while watching the news coverage of the events in Chile that the focus was not on the proximity to Christmas. It was on the devastation. Because, it would be devastating to have the home that your family has lived in for generations destroyed at any time of the year. And, while I noticed that Chilean people have a lot of strong traditions around Christmas, the most important seemed to be gathering with family.
The Christmas celebration at the family house looked different from the room parties for a few reasons. First, it was a proper Christmas celebration rather than a party leading up to it. Second, the families staying in the family house all had children who were hospitalized and were not able to leave their rooms. Third, (which I will explain more below) the two types of gatherings had different purposes.
To start, I should preface this with the way people celebrate Christmas in Chile is very different from how Christmas is celebrated by my family in the US. A brief overview of what takes place every year with my family to provide some background. On Christmas Eve (at least before my parents moved to New Mexico and didn’t have to be catching last minute flights to the midwest) we alternative every year visiting with my mom’s extended family or my dad’s. These are mini family reunions of sorts and are filled with catching up about life events from the year, lots of food, and general mingling. Then back home, my family (mainly my sister and I) dawn our matching Christmas PJs that we usually pick out on Black Friday from Target or Old Navy and go to bed. The next morning, my parents and I get up and spend about an hour trying to convince my siblings to wake up so that we can open gifts and be ready in time for our next event. Once they are out of bed, we go around and each open a present at a time (sitting in our designated spots in the living room) with the Netflix crackling fireplace special playing the TV to set the ambiance. After all the gifts are opened, my dad starts making some breakfast while the rest of us get ready and take our turns to eat, shower, clean up, etc so that everyone is ready on time. Around 1pm we head over to my aunt’s house for more Christmas Day celebrations with my mom’s family (my grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins) including more gifts and a late lunch. We make our way home after dark, but head a few doors down to meet with friends to end the day of festivities. It is a pretty packed and standardized routine.
With all of the chatter and excitement I had been hearing surrounding Christmas in Chile, I was expecting somewhat of an equal level of chaos and community. It should also be noted that Christmas is celebrated on the 24th in Chile. Not the 25th. And, I was told (but didn’t believe at the time) that the 25th is basically like any other day.
I spent the morning of the 24th chatting with some families in the house as we ate breakfast, talking with the house assistant on shift, and doing some work on my computer to wrap up my time in Chile and prepare for my approaching departure. I also took some time to relax and enjoy my first warm-weather, summertime Christmas by sitting outside and soaking up the views that were so distinct from the snow-covered sidewalks and bare trees that I am used to. Throughout the day, I was never told when to expect festivities to begin. Eventually, around 6pm, during a conversation with the room assistant working at the time, I asked when I should expect the Christmas dinner to be held that evening. He told me that his coworker, the one on for the Christmas night shift, doesn’t start her turn until 9pm so not until then.
I went in and out of the main areas between then and 9pm, thinking that the cooking might begin earlier and that I would be around to help in case. Well, I was wrong, and cooking didn’t begin until around 10pm. But, I was there to help with the tasks needed to prepare for the Christmas dinner, which consisted of some basic party foods, a salad, corn, a chicken and vegetable dish, and round fried potatoes (which apparently are a Christmas special). When all was said and done, we sat down to eat around 11:30pm at a table set for 10. But, only 4 seats were filled: 2 parents, the room assistant, and me. We shared the meal together and when the parents were done, they walked to the tree, grabbed the present for their child and went to the hospital to visit during the special holiday extended hours. Over the course of the next two hours, the rest of the caregivers came by to have a plate of food, grab the present for their child and go back to them. And, as I was told, the 25th was basically like any ordinary day, with no special pomp or frills.
Reflection
Although different from what I expected and anticipated, when I went to bed early in the morning of the 25th and then spent the rest of the day reflecting and calling in to get a virtual seat at my family’s gatherings, I did not feel disappointed or like I missed out on some experience that I envisioned. But, in conversations I had that following morning, I learned that the room assistant, who’s first time it was hosting working for Christmas at the family house, worried that the celebration was not a success for the families nor for me. There wasn’t a big communal gathering or a shared meal. It wasn’t like a normal Christmas celebration in Chile. But, how could it be? It wasn’t a normal circumstance. These parents were celebrating away from their own families and their own homes. There were celebrating in a house where they had a dorm room, more or less, so that they could be close to their hospitalized child at all times.
The purpose of the event was not to have a big celebration for the families and a long party that lasted well into the next morning. The purpose was to have a warm meal prepared for parents to come to and enjoy without the stress of making it themselves. It was to have the option available to them to sit and eat together or fit it into how they wanted the evening to go. The purpose was not to have a big gathering around the Christmas tree with chants and excitement about the presents. It was about creating a space where the parents knew they could go and find those moments of normalcy and someone waiting there with a hug and warm plate of food in between trips in and out of their child’s hospital room. The Christmas celebration at the family house was for the families staying there to interact with how they wanted. It was not to have a picture-perfect Christmas. Because, for them, it wasn’t.
For most of the families, this year marked their first Christmas after their lives shifted from having a well child to having a sick one. Last year, a couple had a toddler who tore open Christmas paper and ran around with excitement. And now, they have a child in a hospital bed with a traumatic brain injury and permanent extensive paralysis, who won’t be tearing open wrapping paper without assistance or dancing to seasonal tunes being played through speakers during the holiday gathering. This was a time of forced acknowledgement of the change. A time where they had to create different expectations and way to enjoy the festivities. A time to reflect on the fact that the years of future celebrations and traditions they envisioned the year prior would never come to pass as they had imagined them at the time.
What an honor it was to be there to sit and share a meal with families during those moments. Even though they came and went. Even though there wasn’t a moment with everyone together. Even though no presents were opened in front of the Christmas tree. We were there to occupy the moments when the parents had to leave their child’s side on Christmas. We were there to offer comfort and support at a time when it was apparent how abnormal the year’s celebration was. And maybe marking a realization of what was to be expected for the day in the years to come.
I can only imagine when these families sat down to Christmas dinner, it was glaringly obvious that their child was several yards away in a hospital bed and not in the chair next to them to enjoying the same meal. So, I don’t blame them that the moments they spent at that table were brief. Just enough to fill their bellies, share a deep inhale and exhale together, and then return.
Despite having a room with colorfully wrapped gifts for a number of kids under a brightly decorated tree in a room filled with tiny chairs, toy cars, and children’s books, no children attended the Christmas Day events in person. I don’t there was a moment, though, that their absence wasn’t obvious and the tiny bouts of joyful giggles that occupied the empty air of the other parties or years prior were not on someone’s mind. The family house, itself, was empty and quiet most of the night, in fact.
And that does not mean it was a failure. It is precisely what made it a success. Because, the goal of hosting Christmas at the family house was not to have families celebrate with us. It was to make sure that they could celebrate with their child. And when the house was empty, the children whose gifts were once scrunched under the Valparaiso Ronald McDonald Family House Christmas tree had hospital rooms that were full. With memories, with love, and with their family.
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Beautiful!