For all you do

This one’s for the workhorses.

The ones with their shoulders to the wheel. The shift workers — especially people who volunteer to take Christmas shifts from other workers with young families.

The nurses. The doctors. Police officers, firefighters, paramedics. Snow plow operators. Fast-food workers. The called-up and the called-in. The people you don’t even think about when you’re worrying about whether the turkey’s cooked enough and whether Uncle Bill has had the requisite number of rum-and-cokes to start his annual speech that begins “What’s wrong with this country is…”

The hospital cleaning staff with the least seniority. Airline pilots and flight crews who are dealing with the same issues they deal with every day. 911 operators. Taxi drivers. Ship crews.

Later, once your Christmas dinner is done, you’ll be full of the compliments of the season and the food of the day, and you’ll be wondering about whether the lights you put on really complement this year’s tree. You probably won’t be thinking that at the power company, someone’s monitoring the grid, line crews are on call-in, operators are standing by on phones, and all of that is keeping the red, green and yellow lights all a-twinkle on your balsam fir and the kitchen coffee machine on long enough to make enough brew to rouse everyone at least a little bit from their postprandial turkey torpor.

We like to pretend that Christmas is a mythical time when we all get to wind down and spend joyous time with family. What we forget is that civilization is still a great and moving machine of many parts, and at the helm of many of those parts are people who aren’t winding down at all.

For some, the holidays are actually a busier-thannormal time: covering for those who are off, making do with resources that are deliberately reduced by employers, filling in the gaps that must be filled.

The gig economy still churns with work that gig employees can’t afford to turn down. If you turn down a job to sit down with your family, maybe next time someone else gets the first call for new work.

This is not meant to be a depressing message about the stresses of work life — in fact, it’s meant as a thank you, from those of us who aren’t at work, and especially from those who might unexpectedly need your help.

If we forgot to mention your job by name in the lists above, don’t think it’s because we don’t value your work and time.

If you’re at work tonight or tomorrow or the next day, we hope your workload is tolerable and that people treat you with respect, goodwill and good cheer. That your house is warm when you finally get home. And that you get to put your feet up at the end of a long day — or night.

Merry Christmas.