Christmas Eve, and I am on my way to work. I haven’t been counting, but in my medical career I have probably worked between fifteen and twenty Christmases. The way the big holidays work in the medical business is that you either get Thanksgiving or Christmas off, and most years, New Year’s Day (as a somewhat inferior holiday) is thrown in as lagniappe with Thanksgiving to balance things out -- something like the way when a star player is traded in a professional sport the exchange usually includes a low draft pick or a minor player as an extra. Just to make things look better on paper.
I don’t mind working Christmas. When I signed up to be a doctor, certain things were included in the deal. Some of them I am not good with, like having to interact with insurance companies, or to deal with hospitalized patients who are angry that their food is cold, or patients that complain that they need to stay until tomorrow morning because they don’t like driving in the dark. But working Christmas is one of those things I knew I would have to do going in and feel is part of the sacrifice. Not only is there nothing to be done about it, it is, unlike some of the other unpleasantries of medicine, absolutely necessary. People get sick every day of the week. Somebody has to be on hand when they do.
No job is worth anything if it is not worth sacrificing for. Not that working Christmas is a massive sacrifice, but it is a minor one that can add up over the years. In this sense, I wonder about my colleagues who I never see on Christmas — dermatologists and allergists and plastic surgeons who paid their dues in residency but never have to work a major holiday ever again. There may be great value in these fields of medicine, but there is a certain honor in knowing your job is necessary enough that it has to be done every single day, no exceptions.
The original Christmas story is the Christ story, which is a story of sacrifice. Sacrifice adds something to the value of every job. It adds meaning, a sense of purpose. Nothing in life matters to me quite so much as the search for meaning, and sacrifice, even small sacrifices, like going to work when almost no one else has to, brings meaning to work. Nothing has value if never demands anything. When something or someone makes a demand of me, I must ask myself, “Is this thing worth a sacrifice? And if so, how much?” And when the answer is in the affirmative, not only have I decided that the thing is valuable, but I have now made a new commitment to it.
It is this decision, that practicing medicine is worth working Christmas for, that makes medicine more valuable to me.
The many people who go to work on Christmas make the holiday possible for everyone else. People are safer at home because there are firemen and police on call. They are able to enjoy Christmas morning because the electricity comes on. They are able to call their families because someone at the telephone company showed up for work.
Sacrifice makes the world go around. My sacrifice on Christmas will be small — probably 8 to 10 hours of work. But it is what I am able to give. I give it gladly — because my job would be worth nothing to me if it didn’t require that I put something into it. To give it meaning.