'A bit of me wishes I was with family': Meet the people working on Christmas Day
Declan O’Donovan, animal care manager and Sean McKeown, director at Fota Wildlife Park, Cork, which will open to the public who are required to pre-book a time and date. Picture Dan Linehan
For the vast majority of us, Christmas Day is an excuse to feast with family and friends before putting the feet up, unwrapping sweets and enjoying whichever Indiana Jones caper is on the box. While we overindulge, there are others who will be out there keeping the country ticking over and putting in shifts that most would never consider.
Declan O’Donovan has worked quite a few Christmas Days since first joining Fota Island Wildlife Park in the early 1980s. The Animal Care Manager looks after a team of twenty-one and over fourteen hundred animals who know nothing about Santa Claus and have little time for the intricacies of bread sauce.
“I enjoy coming in on Christmas Day,” says Declan. “It’s a quiet time to spend with the animals. You give them treats, their Christmas presents essentially, and it means you’re up bright and refreshed so when you get home, you can enjoy the rest of your day.”
Fourteen of the twenty-one person team at Fota will work a split shift on the big day, with the first crew coming in in the morning to do the feeding and checks on the enclosures, and the second taking over just after lunchtime.
“The afternoon shift will feed the animals and put them to bed,” he continues. “Thankfully, because it gets dark by four o’clock, most of the animals are asleep early enough. So it means everyone can get back to their families. We have a great team here so if people are rostered they can always swap shifts with others.”
There is an element of knowing what you’re getting into when you start to work with animals. It is a labour of love and working days the rest of us have off goes with the territory.
“Most of the people who work here have been doing this for years,” says Declan. “They’d be used to it and so would their families. They like coming in to see the animals, even for those few hours and spending time with them on the day. It might even get them out of peeling the spuds.”
In the run up to Christmas Day, the team are busy preparing those aforementioned gifts for the animals. While the carnivores have boxes full of meat that they can rip into, primates can look forward to a good dollop of extra raisins or peanuts.
Though he wouldn’t dare pick out a favourite, Declan says he might throw an extra steak or two the way of his beloved cheetahs this year.
“I’ve done a lot of work with them over the years,” says Declan, “and they just have that something special. There’s a kind of aloofness to them but yet they’re extremely intelligent. I have to be fair to all the animals though and say I love them all.”
When the team at Fota finish for the day, Frank Leader will be just a few hours into his shift at Cork University Hospital. A leader by name and a leader by nature, not only is he an emergency doctor saving lives but the kind of person that offers to work on the most wonderful day of the year.
“I volunteered,” says the 38-year-old. “There’s a good bunch of Emergency Consultants in here and we divided up the Christmas period as equitably as possible.”
Frank has been an Emergency Doctor since 2009. Having spent some time overseas, the Corkman managed to persuade his French-Canadian wife, Emmanuele, to return to Ireland last year with their young family. Choosing to work Christmas Day was, he admits, a tough decision but there is something of a rationale behind it.
“I have two little girls and they will probably not appreciate Christmas as fully as they will in subsequent years,” he says. “Doing it now means I can spend next Christmas and the Christmas after that with them. It’s heartbreaking. It’s my favourite time of the year hands down, so there will be a little bit of me that wishes I was at home with my family.”
Frank will clock in at 8am, work the Emergency Room until around 4pm and then be on call for the rest of his shift which finishes the following morning. Unlike other professions, there is no chance of nipping back home for some pudding or a slice of ham. He will stay on-call and on-site for the entire twenty-four hours.
“It’s very easy to feel sorry for yourself and compare yourself with people who are not working,” says Frank, “but at the same time, your direct comparators are people who are sick and who really don’t want to be in the Emergency Department any day, let alone Christmas Day. We try our level best to get people home if we can and to be as uplifting as possible for the people who have to stay.”
While this might entail the wearing of tinsel or Christmas hats and, in some cases, a visit from the big man himself, the staff are conscious of maintaining a certain balance in the mood. It is, after all, a hospital.
“By and large the patients appreciate the fact that you’re trying to create something a little festive for the people that are there,” says Frank, “but you have to be judicious.”
Once his shift ends, Frank will jump into his car and drive straight to his parents’ home in Boherbue where his wife and his two young daughters, two-and-a-half-year-old Clémentine and four-month-old Marie-Soleil, are spending Christmas.
“I might get a few sandwiches,” he says. “I’ll certainly have St. Stephen’s Day off and possibly the 27th too so I will absolutely make up for all the lost eating.”
Security professional, Bisera Yakimova will be deferring her indulgence even longer.
“I am Orthodox Christian,” says the native of Macedonia. “We celebrate Christmas Day on January 7th. So I usually let others know I’m available to work because it’s a special day and they want to spend it with their family. It’s also triple pay and a bit more, so that helps.”
It is bound to come in handy for sure. Though Bisera might not celebrate Christmas on the 25th, her 11-year-old daughter, Ksenia, and all her friends most certainly do. Three days later, Ksenia turns twelve and then there is the Orthodox Christmas Day itself to celebrate.
“We don’t have a Macedonian Church here so we will pop into a local Serbian Church and then we get to lunchtime. I spend that with my husband and my daughter. We don’t prepare turkey in Macedonia. We usually have suckling pig. We will probably have some pork on the day.”
Bisera manages a Global Security Operation Centre for a well-known global client of her company, Provincial Security. With over fifteen years experience, including a four-year stint in Afghanistan, the 39-year-old has seen quite a few things in her time in the security industry. Though she stresses that one must always be prepared in her line of work, she suspects that this particular twelve-hour shift will be fairly calm.
“Christmas Day is usually quiet,” she says, “We bring in some nice lunch, wear our Christmas jumpers and we always have a Christmas tree in our GSOC. The whole of December is magical.”
Just goes to show that even for people who are working on the big day, Christmas can still be the most wonderful time of the year.
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