by Jenny Shelton
Child Life Manager

If you have children around you during the holiday season it is hard not to catch the Christmas spirit.  The same can be said here at Le Bonheur.  Even though this is not the ideal place to be on Christmas Day, there is still the sense of anticipation that Santa will deliver presents where ever a child is…home or the hospital. 

For the past few years the Child Life Department has asked for help from the community to fill Christmas bags for children that will be here Christmas Day.  Our community has graciously allowing us to help Santa make his special delivers to the children at Le Bonheur.  We are very thankful to all who have contributed past and present in this project.

Putting the bags together can be a tedious process, but it is all done for the children.   The bags are divided into age groups from infants to adolescents and appropriate items are selected to be included in the bags.  Several days before Christmas Eve, child life staff and some additional elves come together to help pack the bags for each age group.  From doing Christmas bags for several years we have a rough estimate of how many bags will be needed in each age group (we do about 100 infant bags each year).  After the bags have been prepared, we start watching the census numbers and on Christmas Eve morning we get a final count to be delivered to each unit.  Several members of the child life staff help distribute bags on Christmas Eve afternoon and the nursing night shift on each unit makes sure each child gets their specific bag.  So if you are ever asked if Santa comes to Le Bonheur you can say…yes he does!

We would like to wish all of our blog readers a very Happy Holiday season!