Holiday Cheer in the Dining Hall

In thinking of how we could reach the most service members on Christmas day, our minds immediately turned to the one venue where we knew everyone would go, the DFAC. The wonderful soldiers that run the dining hall were generous to loan us a small portion of their space to set up a display and distribution point for all our holiday giveaways. Securing the space was the easiest part, putting everything together was quite a task considering our already busy schedule. But with the help of two volunteers, and a little resourcefulness, we made it happen.

Having secured a large piece of wood and red and white paint, we again put our arts and crafts skills to the test. Note that arts and crafts skills do not include carpentry skills. We have a volunteer to thank for that. On Christmas Eve, yes we were cutting it close, our volunteer managed to cut our large hunk of wood into three rectangular pieces that would be perfect for our display. Now we had to pull out the paint brushes and hope the dry desert air would work its magic. 

 

Neelum and Jon working on our DFAC display.

So Neelum put on a flannel shirt (possibly in the spirit of the holiday…but most likely to keep from decorating our work shirts with red and white paint) and we enlisted the help of our official Red Cross artist (a title recently earned) Jon to get to painting. A few hours later we had three beautiful display boards. In anticipation of holiday cards from our Holiday Mail for Heroes program, I had created some mail boxes (again, brown paper is invaluable) and our display was coming together! 

 

From 11am to 3pm on Christmas we handed out Holiday cards, phone cards, stockings and magazines and just enjoyed taking pictures, greeting soldiers, and enjoying the bustling atmosphere at the DFAC. Couldn’t have chosen a better venue to truly enjoy the spirit of Christmas Day. 

Red Cross staffers spreading holiday cheer in the dining hall on Christmas Day.