December, 2006
I gave my best Disney smile and wave as I watched the last of the day’s dozen trainees depart the building, sending them out into the world as full-fledged Disney cast members.
As soon as they were all out of sight, I collapsed, exhausted, against the wall.
“‘Tis the season for Brazilians,” I sang under my breath.
December was an extremely busy time at Walt Disney World. Not only were there loads of additional, holiday-themed entertainment offerings that had everyone working overtime, but the holiday season coincides with the southern hemisphere’s summer break, and the park is inundated with South American tourists. Brazilians are the most common, descending on the park in large groups of up to a hundred, wearing matching shirts and chanting in unison as they make their way from attraction to attraction led by a tour guide carrying a tiny, triangular flag with the logo of whatever travel company is hosting their trip.
The primary language in Brazil is Portuguese, and it’s definitely a benefit to have some Portuguese speakers on hand at this time. Thus, every December, Disney takes on thousands of International College Program interns from Brazil. Hundreds of them come to the Entertainment department.
The problem was, I happened to be one of only a handful of people at the time who could train our new folks to be character attendants. It’s a five-day training process, and on any given day for the entire month of December, there were a dozen Brazilian college students on each day of the process. All six or seven of us who could train character attendants were working six days a week, eleven hour shifts, usually alone trying to wrangle a dozen trainees at once.
It had been two weeks of this so far, and I was already exhausted.
It was Saturday, the day our shift schedules came out. I already knew what I was doing for the next seven days: I had tomorrow off, and then six more days of training shifts. Today I got to find out what I’d be doing for the week starting next Sunday–the week that ended on December 23.
I wasn’t exactly shocked at what I saw. Monday through Saturday, six more days of training shifts. And on Sunday the 17th–what would have been my day off–they actually gave me a seventh day of work that week, a shift at one of the Magic Kingdom Christmas parties. The idea that I would be working on Christmas day was pretty much a foregone conclusion, even though the schedule wasn’t out yet; for a Disney cast member to take vacation time in late December, you pretty much had to have decades of seniority, and I didn’t.
Defeated, I headed to my car, and, as was my custom, called my mom on the drive home.
“How’s it looking for Christmas?” She asked.
“Not good.”
“Okay,” she said, doing a pretty good job of hiding the disappointment in her voice. “Maybe we can find a way for you to participate in the Christmas show through video or something.”
My grandfather (Opa) always said that what he wanted for Christmas was to hear his family make music. We are a pretty musical family. The majority of his five children and sixteen grandchildren at least took piano lessons as a kid. A few of them kept their skills up into adulthood. Many of us were also excellent singers, and between the whole family there were several flautists and clarinetists, a saxophone player, a trumpeter and a trombonist. So, since it’s what Opa wanted, every Christmas we put together a little show for him and performed it in the living room of my grandparents’ house. Everyone participated in some way, with ‘acts’ ranging in complexity from dressing in a Santa hat and singing a Christmas carol to all the instrumentalists playing orchestral arrangements of Silent Night and Deck the Halls. (We jokingly referred to ourselves ‘The Front Room Fantasy Band’.) Opa loved it.
The problem was that everyone lived within a few miles of each other, back in Chicago…except me. I was the first, and so far, only person in the family to move more than a few miles away–and to work for a company that was not only open on Christmas Day, but it was one of the busiest days of the year.
It broke my heart a little that on Christmas Eve, for Opa’s show, I would be the only one that wasn’t there this year.
My mind was racing as I drove home. Could I still find some way to participate? I didn’t have the equipment to record myself, either audio or video. I did have a digital camera, though. Maybe I could do a photo montage? Set it to music?
The next day was my only day off until Christmas. If I was gonna do this, I would have to get moving.
I chose the song ‘We Need a Little Christmas’ and started plotting out the photos I wanted to go along with each line: candles in the window, carols at the spinet, et cetera. Then, I started decorating my little apartment for Christmas and documenting my progress.
One problem, though. The line ‘Santa dear, we’re in a hurry’ definitely required a picture with Santa. Fortunately, I knew of a place to get one where a grown adult wouldn’t look too weird doing so.
The next day, I got back in my chosen outfit, braced myself for Christmas crowds, and headed to Downtown Disney. I waited by myself through the half-hour long line and tried not to feel too self-conscious.
Finally, I got to the front of the line. Santa sat on a large wooden chair in a cute little cabin. His suit was velvet, and his whiskers looked real. I handed my camera to the photographer and asked him, “May I have a picture with you?”
“Of course,” Santa replied warmly, gesturing to his lap.
“Are you sure?” I asked hesitantly. It’s not that I felt I was too old, it was more that I was cognizant of my own weight.
“Of course I am!” Santa replied. “That’s how it’s done.”
“Okay,” I gave in, sitting carefully on his knee. We both looked at the camera and smiled.
“Thank you,” I said, starting to get up.
“And what do you want for Christmas?” Santa asked.
I looked at him in surprise as the photographer continued snapping pictures. Oh–we’re really doing this? I thought. I wasn’t prepared for that. But Santa was treating me (an obvious adult) with the same care that he was giving to every other kid in his line, and the question apparently had to be asked.
I thought about it for a moment. “Peace on earth, good will toward men…and maybe some time off to visit my family?”
Santa looked pensive. I could see, just for a moment, an expression flicker over his face as the pieces fell into place and he realized who was, where I worked, and why I was getting a picture with Santa all alone. “Well…that’s a tall order and this time of year,” he confessed quietly. “But I’ll see what I can do.”
With that photo checked off my list, I hurried home to continue decorating my apartment for Christmas, all alone.
Haul out the holly
Put up the tree before my spirit falls again
Fill up the stockings
I may be rushing things…
But deck the halls again now
For we need a little Christmas
Right this very minute
It hasn’t snowed a single flurry, but…(You know the rest)
It’s time we hung some tinsel on the evergreen bow
For I need a little angel sitting on my shoulder
We need a little Christmas now
When I was satisfied that I’d done the best I could with a 2006 digital camera trying to take timed pictures of myself, I sent my slide show off to the family. Then began my thirteen days of pre-Christmas exhaustion.
The fifth day of pre-Christmas exhaustion was a Friday, the fifteenth. As I wrapped up five days of teaching twelve new Brazilians how to be Disney cast members, I was already feeling the fatigue. Tomorrow was another day of training, then Sunday I was working at the Christmas party at Magic Kingdom, then it would be six more days with a new crop of Brazilians and then, probably, six more days with another new crop of Brazilians, without any break. My heart sank. The next day, I would get my new schedule, for the work week that began on Christmas Eve. I was already expecting to spend the holiday exhausted and miserable.
As I returned to the deployment base to wrap up my day, my manager flagged me down. “Laura, we need to talk about your schedule.”
I braced myself, quietly screaming internally. “Sure, what’s up?”
Anxiety churned in my stomach. They were giving me back to the parks? That meant I could wind up anywhere. And since the schedule for next week was already out, and the schedule for Christmas week would be released tomorrow, they were both already in pretty much their final forms, which meant any shifts that were still open at this point would be the bottom of the barrel. I was probably going to spend Christmas day getting rained on in some desolate, forgotten corner of Disney’s Animal Kingdom, or worse yet, as a ‘spare’, waiting around the deployment base or doing busywork like folding costume pieces until some emergency happened and they needed a replacement cast member somewhere (IF that happened).
That night, as I sat alone in my apartment, the tinsel on my Christmas tree fluttering gently in the breeze from my air conditioner, the ice cream truck rolled through my apartment complex playing ‘Silent Night’. I burst into tears.
The next day, I bid farewell to my gaggle of Brazilians and headed to the deployment base, doom looming over me. It was after 5 PM on Saturday, and the Christmas schedule had been released. Now I would discover my Christmas fate.
When I logged in to the computer and pulled up my schedule, the first thing that showed was the work week that began the next day. The Christmas party was still on there, as well as a few days of training, but on Friday and Saturday, the 22nd and 23rd, my training shifts had been struck through and grayed out. Those two days now said ‘scheduled day off’.
Well, that was something. If I couldn’t be there on Christmas itself, at least I could go home for the weekend.
I clicked to the next page and was stunned.
Sunday and Monday, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, also said ‘scheduled day off’.
I ran to my boss for confirmation. “You said something about park scheduling replacing those training shifts that were getting cancelled?”
She shrugged. “Park scheduling said that since you already had a 40-hour work week, even without those training shifts, they couldn’t put anything else on there or it would be overtime.” She looked apologetic. “If you need the hours, we could put you back on the schedule and have you assist with Edgar’s training class–”
“No, no,” I said hastily. “I’ll be fine.”
I clocked out, giddy with excitement. I actually had time off to go home for Christmas!
Then, I stopped in my tracks and realized that several days ago–felt like years ago–I had asked Santa for this.
It was probably just a coincidence…
Or, I told myself, feeling a little like Fred Gailey at the end of Miracle on 34th Street, maybe it wasn’t.
As I drove home, a poem started writing itself in my head, and that evening I used it to break the news to my parents that we would all get to be together for Christmas.
Laura Writes 
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