Day ten

The 12 Days of an Alternative Christmas

For the emergency worker.

Christmas is often described as a pause.

A break and a moment when everything slows down.

For emergency workers, it does not.

If you are working in emergency services this Christmas, the world depends on you continuing while it celebrates.

Phones still ring and sirens still sound.
People still need help at their worst moments.

Satya Nadella speaks about leadership rooted in empathy.
About recognising the human cost behind systems that never stop.

Emergency work carries a particular weight.
You step into other people’s crises while your own life waits in the background.
You hold calm when everything around you is breaking.
There can be pride in this and exhaustion.
Servanthood and frustration that is hard to voice.

Christmas messaging rarely holds space for that complexity.

It praises sacrifice abstractly.
It forgets the person inside the uniform.
This post is not here to call you a hero.
It is not here to romanticise what you do.
It is here to acknowledge it.

Showing up again and again matters.
Even when it costs you time and energy and moments you would rather be elsewhere.

If this season feels different for you, that does not make you separate from it.
It means you are part of what keeps everyone else safe.

This post is for the people holding the line while others rest.

I am writing this as someone who does not have it all together.
This is not positivity. It is presence.

If this landed, it is because you are not alone, even when it feels like you are.

I wish you good health this Christmas.
Truly.
Dave
The and. team
Debbie Halls-Evans

PS.
I am writing this series because the non stop marketing campaigns and messaging of Christmas idealisms can leave a lot of people unseen.
This is not about doing more and not about fixing anyone.
It is an invitation to notice and to think and to see.

One day at a time.

This is Day Ten.