Supplement to Lincoln Daily News.com
2013 Worship Guide
Page 35
The Christian Villiage Chaplain
A
t The Christian Village,
where I serve as chaplain,
we are in the thick of the
Christmas spirit. We have several
volunteers out shopping for the
perfect Christmas presents for
each resident; we have our activ-
ity staff working hard on our up-
coming Christmas party for resi-
dents and families; and as I write
this, we even have one of our
church partners coming all the
way from Champaign to help us
decorate the nursing home. It’s a
busy time of year including a lot
of singing of those old and famil-
iar Christmas songs like “Away in
a Manger,” “Frosty the Snowman”
and “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot
Like Christmas.”
When I started working in nurs-
ing homes about 16 years ago (at
DeWitt County Nursing Home in
Hallsville), I remember the activ-
ity and nursing staff telling me at
Christmastime that there is one
song we should not include in
our festive caroling with the resi-
dents during the holidays:
I’ll be home for Christmas.
You can plan on me.
Please have snow and mistletoe
And presents around the tree.
Christmas Eve will find me
Where the love-light gleams.
I’ll be home for Christmas,
If only in my dreams.
The thought was that this would
upset the residents because of
their inability to be home for
Christmas due to a variety of
physical ailments and their need
for 24-hour care.
Obviously, Christmas can bring
with it grief and sadness to many
elderly men and women as they
look back on past Christmases
with loved ones who have since
passed away, or as already men-
tioned, just the loss that is felt
when people desire to be home
for the holidays but instead find
themselves in a community that
looks more like a hospital or
other facility, with long, sterile
hallways and shared rooms no
bigger than a dorm room at a lo-
cal college.
The baby born in the manger
at Christmas can give us hope,
however. The Son of Go walked
