The Benedictine Living Community in Crookston is celebrating the week leading up to Christmas with a Holiday Spirit Week for its staff, residents, and visitors to partake in to fill it with more cheer. The facilities will be dressed in Christmas decorations, and each day will have different themes. “Each year, we try to do a holiday week for the staff and residents, so we encourage the residents of the Summit and Nursing Home to take part as well as the family members coming to visit. We welcome them to join in the fun,” Volunteer Coordinator Ashley Melsa explained. “We have the facility all decorated, and it looks fantastic there, so joining in the fun will bring in more cheer.”
On Monday, December 19, the community will celebrate Mean, Green Monday, where they ask people to bring out their inner Grinch and wear and cover the community in green. On Tuesday, the community will celebrate Tinsel Tuesday, where the community and volunteers will be covered in shiny and bright items. On Wednesday, the community will celebrate Winter Wonderland Wednesday, where the community asks everyone to wear white and help turn it into a giant snowball. Thursday, the staff will celebrate Holly Jolly Hat/Scrub Day, where the staff will wear holiday scrubs, shirts, and headwear but the community still invites visiting residents to wear Santa hats or other holiday headwear. To finish the week off, the community is celebrating with Merry Sweater Friday, with members wearing ugly sweaters, a resident Christmas party with a volunteer Santa, and the community’s activity staff dressing up as elves to deliver gifts to the residents from the Community’s Angel Tree. “We have Santa come a couple of times, so we have a volunteer Santa that comes in for the Christmas Party. He’ll be there on Friday for our resident Christmas Party, so everyone who grabbed an angel off the Angel Tree and donated a gift to the residents will receive their gifts from Santa at the Christmas Party on the twenty-third,” Ashley Melsa explained. “Santa will be there that day, and then we’ll have one of the activity staff dress up as Santa, or maybe I’ll dress up as an elf or a Christmas tree or something, and we’ll go around the facility laughing and giving out candy canes for something fun to do during the spirit week.” The volunteers who dress up throughout the week will also receive prizes for their participation in the week from the Community’s GEMS program.
To help spread the holiday cheer to the residents, the community welcomes any visitors to join in on the spirit week. However, they are still enforcing protective measures to protect the residents inside, not just from COVID but from the flu season as well. “It is also flu season, so we do need to be cautious of what’s going around in the community, so we don’t want that to come into our facility also. We still require mask-wearing, and we do want to limit the number of people that come into the facility, but we’re not necessarily limiting it. If your loved ones are there and you want to come visit them and bring them some cheer and dress up like the Grinch on Grinch Monday, we would absolutely love that. So yes, we are wearing masks within the facility, so it is a requirement for everyone who comes in.”
The Benedictine Living Community-Crookston’s Holiday Spirit Week begins on Monday and will have holiday themes throughout the week of December 19-23. Stay tuned to KROX’s Bulletin Board to learn the theme for each day. A poster for the spirit week can be seen below.
