"No room!!" - The most unfestive christmas day

When Mary went to Bethlehem on the first Christmas day, the innkeepers had to extend their unwelcome to Mary, saying there's no room for her. This Christmas day, as an innkeeper representative, I had to break the same news to many grumpy guests, who have waited for ages in line just to hear the words, "there's no room available". Staff are stressed, demoralised and tired. Guests are dissatisfied, impatient and frustrated. Everyone is unhappy on this supposed day of celebration, the 'most wonderful time of the year'! How ironic

Anyways, this year's Christmas has to be the most unfestive of all for me - and im sure hoping it will be the worst ever. For the most part, it was ruined by giving me the A shift. Maybe it was planned as such with the thought that I would have a fancy Christmas program in the evening, but it was not to be.

Christmas eve we had a gathering with (2 thirds) the Ho side family, which featured a fancy potluck dinner complete with desserts and a little bit of booze, but because of early work the next day, I wasn't in the mood to stay up late and entertain them longer. Might have also had a Christmas eve night service, which I duly skipped. yes, having work the next day always spoils the mood.

Christmas day at work was when I faced probably the largest and relentless crowd of guests ever seen in all my time in reception. With a mixture of check-ins, check-outs, random requests, and coming back to collect keys, the queue line extended at least 5 persons long along 4 lines, and they just kept coming... even when it was time for me to end work, there was no end in sight to the flow of patrons. When I thought I had cleared off a good chunk of the queue, I look up and immediately get demoralised to see twice the number had joined the line.
To make things worse, housekeeping seemed to be on strike that day... there were constantly ZERO available rooms even after the check-in timing of 2pm. newly cleaned ones without blocks were instantly swiped up, and complaint-warranting decisions had to be made like assigning a twin smoking room to one who booked a NS king bayview. Well, it was the lesser of two evils; the other being asking them to wait another hour or so for their room, and join the queue again. Even an hour was a miraculous timing to achieve, considering that the room queue hit 22 at one point, when each room remained in the queue for about 4 hours before finally being clean.
With every new guest attended to, we feel the dread of facing an impatient angry guest who already waited half an hour in line, and when told that their room is not ready after 2pm, thinks the best solution is to explode and take out all that frustration on the receptionist, before bringing the complaint to the social media platform.
I decided to spare a thought for myself and not try in vain to save the hopeless situation - whether im there or not, they're all gonna drown in the sea of people anyways. I did something I never did before - I just left. Even when there were more waiting behind, with nobody taking over me. simply because there was no one. << bad roster planning. Even so, I finally left the hotel only at 5pm; 2 hours past my time, no claims, no gratitude. I had hoped for some celebration among colleagues... but everyone understandably had no time or mood to celebrate.

While I was at work enduring all that hell, I was missing the Christmas service; the supposed 'greatest party of the year'. along with it, I missed the best chance to give and receive Christmas cards, and the only meal that would have made the day special - the church Christmas lunch. maybe some peeps would have hung out after lunch too...

Finally, I returned home, looking forward to a nice warm homely home-cooked Christmas dinner like those my mom always cooked on previous christmasses that I'm home. But instead, I was fed a meal fully consisting of leftovers from last night's party. Im not hard up for a nice meal, but that was the only remaining hope of making this Christmas seem like Christmas in a good way.
In the end, the day ended just being too ordinary.


Some of the elements which made past christmasses more memorable were totally absent this year: carolling, mission trip, after-service church gathering, Christmas shopping. Ive always noticed that celebrations become lesser for you the older you get. Parties get less extravagant; reducing to just a get together for dinner, presents get smaller in value and significance; sometimes disappearing altogether, games are less played; seeming more and more like a waste of time.