Christmas Day can carry very different meanings depending on where you are in life. For parents with young children, it can be a magical morning filled with Santa, presents, excitement, and traditions that only seem to exist for a few precious years. But that doesn’t mean people without young children suddenly stop valuing the holiday or wanting to spend it with their families. In this case, a hospital employee has found herself caught between those two perspectives after discovering that she is eligible to take Christmas Day off.
Her workplace divides therapists into two groups that alternate holiday coverage each year, while a rolling spreadsheet tracks how many holidays each employee has worked. Because she has worked the most holidays, she has earned the opportunity to take the day off. However, her coworker, S, has young children and desperately wants to be home for Santa and Christmas morning. When S asked her to give up the day, the narrator understood the request but also wanted to celebrate with her own adult children. What started as a simple scheduling decision has now turned into pressure from multiple coworkers who seem to believe that having young children should give S priority.
I Work At A Hospital Where Holiday Coverage Is Shared Between Two Groups Of Therapists Every Single Year
Our Boss Keeps A Rolling Excel Sheet Tracking Exactly How Many Holidays Each Employee Has Worked Throughout The Year
But I Don’t Really Feel Like Christmas With My Family Is Something I Should Have To Reschedule Just Because My Children Are Older
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The conflict ultimately comes down to two competing ideas of what makes a Christmas Day request deserving of special consideration. On one side, S has young children who may experience the excitement of Santa and Christmas morning in a particularly memorable way. Understandably, she would want to be home for those traditions while her children are still small. On the other hand, the narrator has also spent the year making sacrifices, working more holidays than anyone else according to the workplace tracking system.
Her children may be adults, but she still wants to spend Christmas with them, and she doesn’t believe their age makes her family time less meaningful. The most difficult part seems to be that the workplace already has a system designed to determine who should receive the holiday off, yet her coworkers are putting additional emotional pressure on her to disregard that system. She now has to decide whether to prioritize the established rules and the sacrifices she has already made, or give Christmas Day to someone who believes her young children have a stronger claim to the holiday.
