Why Do We Celebrate?

I want to wish everyone in Canada and the USA

 a very happy and safe holiday celebration this week! 

I am going to the lake for two days of relaxing and then for Canada Day, this Wednesday, I will be at work from noon to 8 pm. We are having a little Canada Day party in the afternoon. Providing programs and celebrations at a personal care home is extremely challenging right now during this time of quarantine, social distancing, and so many other changes and worries. We are trying to gather people in very small groups, and then we try and position people with some distance between them.

Previously our Canada Day Parties at the personal care home have been huge outdoor events for residents and families complete with a hired musician, food, and decorations and lots of FUN. We always had a huge turnout. This year - What to do? We are setting up the patio and decorating in Red and White, but we are handling it like a mini “come and go” open house style event for the residents so that we only have a few people gathered at a time. It is a significant change and challenges our creativity.

This year our usual ways of celebrating have been so overwhelmingly disrupted.  We all want our social contacts to return to what it was before the pandemic, but in the meantime, we still want to share our lives with each other in some way. 

What I am impressed with is how resilient people have been. We are, indeed, finding new ways to celebrate and mark special events. My niece’s husband secretly contacted her Facebook friends and arranged for everyone to drive past and honk. He even surprised her by decorated their front yard.  She was thrilled with this new version of a birthday celebration.  I was pleased to discover that I could attend live-streamed service from my local church this past Easter from my own home.

We are communicating with others and having events on Skype, Zoom or Facetime. People from all over the world are participating in activities in new ways. Some times these changes have been very positive.

I love celebrations!

 I even love those days when unusual celebrations occur and sometimes I try and incorporate them into my home life and into my work life at the personal care home. Just to give one random example- Did you know that today, June 29th, is the International Day of the Tropics, which is sponsored by the United Nations? It is kind of the perfect day to buy a tropical plant, have a sweet beachy drink. Click to learn a bit about the fascinating biodiversity of the tropics. Why do we set up these differnt kinds of events and what is the point of it?

 

What do we celebrate?

We celebrate or commemorate the important markers of our lives. We celebrate our birthdays and commemorate the passing of loved ones. We remember anniversaries. There are special feelings of pride and acknowledgment of your capibilites on the day you get your driver’s licence on the day you graduate from school or when you get that longed-for job or be a winner in that major sports competition.

We celebrate the community acknowledgment of Valentine’s Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s Eve, Mother’s Day, Fathers Day and many other days with big events or family gatherings.  We sometimes do a lot of consumer purchasing to get the right décor, clothing and treats and even cards to share. 

Each culture has its unique occasions and ways that they celebrate these days.  It might be hoisting a beer stein for Oktoberfest, or it might be watching a dragon dance for Chinese New Year.  These celebrations reflect the history, culture and beliefs and geography of a place and a people. It is a way that a group defines itself and binds itself together as a group. It is a way to remember the past traditions of their people and to teach its youth to be proud of their heritage and to continue it into the future.

These special days and moments are centred around universal human experiences. We all experience loss, sadness, fear, accomplishment, and we all look for love, peace, joy, and success. When we act to notice and mark these events and moments, we find meaning in what is happening to us. The sorrowful and the joyful can be shared and let us gain validation for what has happened and our feelings about it. As a group, we can offer each other solace in difficult times, and we can provide practical support too. We can even create a force for change by acknowledging the importance of what has happened.

Back to why do we celebrate?

We have fun and excitement, and we make special memories

What is life without a little joy and laughter? Human being’s health and well being are dependent on having a bit of fun and expressing ourselves.

We bond with others and become part of a broader community.

People need a community and a sense of culture and identity. We need to have the physical support of others, but we also need to have people to share in who we are and have things in common with us. 

We discover more about our own identity and learn what is important to us.

When you celebrate a rite of passage, it can change who you are and in a very real way how you see yourself.   My granddaughter just graduated from grade 6 this past week. She was a little kid and a member of her old school. When she returns to school next term, it will be a new school. It will no longer be the elementary school where she played during recess. It will be a junior high with new expectations, and there will be new social and extracurricular groups for her. Retirement is a big change too. We often describe ourselves by our jobs and our workplace. After you celebrate your retirement, you will redefine who you are and look at new possibilities.

It reflects our growth as people and our changing lives.

Our personal journey is marked by baby showers, births, baptisms, weddings, educational completion and all those other life events. Eventually, there will come the time of our death and commemoration of who we were and of our beliefs.  

Through our lives, we define what kind of person we are, we look at our roles in our communities and families, and where we belong and where we can make a difference. Our special days and events let us mark and confirm what these events mean to us as individuals and as a society.

Lets make this Summer's celebrations fun, thoughtful and meaningful despite the challenges we are facing in our world today.

Have a wonderful Canada Day and a fantastic Fourth of July.

Make some great memories!

Christmas Sheep

My workplace has a part time person responsible for spiritual care. Chaplains can be a part of the Recreation team or perhaps of a Spiritual Care Department, They leads ecumenical services, arrange for churches of different faiths to regularly send priests or ministers to lead services. They will counsel and visit with our residents and their families and be part of the team that provides palliative care and will do memorial services within our facility. The role of a Spiritual Care person in a Personal Care Home is very important and not enough facilities have someone trained for this task. It takes advanced learning and it also requires someone who is able to be respectful, support our residents in their emotional needs and be knowledgeable of a wide range of spiritual belief systems.

Our Chaplain did a more unique Christmas service this year. She did a service where she told the Christmas Story and mixed in related hymns as the story unfolded. She made a lot of props so that the residents could be directly included in the story. There was a group of the residents that wore garland halos and acted as our angels, there were little gold wrapped blocks for our group of Wise Men to hold and there were adorable little "knit with love" sheep for our Shepherd residents to cuddle. It was indeed a special and memorable way to tell the story of Christ's birth.

Amazing Grace.

I work at the personal care home every second weekend and I have the privilege of leading a Sunday Hymn Sing with a group of seniors. Amazing Grace is a song that I always include because it means so much to so many people.

Today, on Good Friday, I wanted to share this beautiful song that reminds us of hope even in our darkest hours.

Sick Day

Sad Pumpkin

I already missed a day of work. I was supposed to work an extra shift on Halloween and I wound up at home vomiting instead. Holidays and parties are big deals for recreation programs with a lot of extra work so my not going will have been a problem to my co-workers. Besides-- I wanted to go! The staff and residents could dress in costumes, and we had decorations, cake and treats to give out. There was a pumpkin carving contest,  a musician performing, and a bake sale with the proceeds going to the Alzheimer's association and that all sounded very exciting to me. It is a larger event with the residents families and our community invited to share in the fun.

One of the issues with working in places with a larger group of people.. is that you get exposed to a whole lot of different infectious organisms. So many residents, staff, and visitors all in one place and in closer physical contact increase your risk of picking something nasty up.  There are several categories of how disease is spread. It can be via what you are eating or drinking, by touching contaminated surfaces, by touching someone or some animal who is infected or by breathing in air that is contaminated. All the different types of microorganisms have their own particular needs for spreading and what they need to multiply.

In fall we aggravate some of the issues by closing windows and turning on forced air heating systems that circulate air from one area to another. Even with good filters the risk of air born infections increases.  People let me yell here; BEING COLD does not actually cause colds despite the common belief. Colds are caused by viruses. Period. Now being cold makes you huddle together with other people who might be infected. Being very cold can be a stress on your system and make your immune system more stressed and therefore less able to fight away that virus. Being sick with something else, being exhausted, being malnourished or on certain medications can mess with your immune system big time.

Where things get really serious is that infections can be devastating to people who have compromised immune systems. It is a real danger to so many residents of nursing homes.  There is a huge amount of effort put into sanitation efforts and other methods of preventing the spread of infections but the fact is people sneeze and cough. Visitors might not even realize they are getting sick and could still be contagious.

What can you do? Wash your hands. Use hand sanitizers.  Eat nutritious foods.  Get plenty of rest and basically try to live as healthy a life as possible.

And--- if  you are sick don't share your germs. Stay home and get better, even if it means missing the Halloween party.