‘What a difference a year makes.’ Central Kentuckians struggle to make Christmas merry
Many Lexington residents were eager to put the struggles of 2020 behind them and celebrate the holidays in a big way this year.
They snapped up Christmas trees as soon as the tree farms opened and covered their homes in lights, driving up sales of holiday decor.
But for others, this is the most difficult Christmas they’ve ever faced.
Some will spend Christmas missing a family member lost to COVID-19 while many others struggle to pay bills, much less buy gifts for their families, as they deal with financial problems brought on by the pandemic. Some organizations have tried to help, but they too are facing unprecedented challenges.
“I’m behind on everything,” said Adrianna Howard, who waited for about five hours in a line of cars Friday to pick up Salvation Army Angel Tree gifts for her children.
She said she had just graduated and was looking for a job before the pandemic hit. Then her husband’s workplace shut down.
She said, “any little bit of savings we had” had been used up to pay their mortgage.
How is she handling Christmas and other challenges? “Just one day at a time, I guess.”
‘Rough’ Christmas after worker cuts hours to teach kids at home
For Tyra Christian, a server who has worked at Cheesecake Factory in Lexington since it opened six years ago, “It’s been rough.”
She was not able to work for several months this year because of the pandemic. When she went back to work, she had to rearrange her schedule to accommodate her four children’s virtual schooling.
Before COVID-19, Christian said she worked at the restaurant full-time during the day and brought home a “nice income” for her family. She now works two or three night shifts each week, and she’s gotten behind on her bills.
To her kids, “I’m a teacher in the daytime, and then I come in here and work when I can at night,” she said. “Just not working as much has been a really big hit.”
On nights she works, business has been slow, further cutting into the income from tips, Christian said.
Usually, Christian said, Christmas is “a big thing” at her house.
“It’s not going to be that big this year,” she said. “We’re going to do what we can, and that’s it. That’s all we can do.”
She recently turned to the Adopt a Server Kentucky Facebook group for help. The group was set up to allow people who work in the service industry to be matched with people willing to help them.
She said one woman paid half of her $650 electric bill, and she received a few items for her children from her Walmart wish list, “which I’m very thankful for.”
With Christmas coming, she said she would buy other presents for the kids as best she can.
“I’ll see what I can come up with,” Christian said. “I’m going to work right up to Christmas.”
Christian said she recently had a memory pop up on Snapchat from this time last year, when the holidays’ typical busyness had brought plenty of customers to her tables, and she was doing well.
“What a difference a year makes,” she said.
COVID causes hardships for multiple professions
Linda Hernandez, a nurse who works in home health, said, “It’s hard right now.”
She has one patient because she has a 3-month-old daughter at home. She worries about bringing sickness home to the baby.
She, too, was at the old Walmart building on Richmond Road Friday to pick up gifts for her children that had been donated through the Angel Tree program.
“I have never had to come out here,” Hernandez said of the Salvation Army. “We’ve got to do what we’ve got to do.”
Charitable organizations like the Salvation Army are working to bridge the gap between people who can afford to celebrate well and those dealing with hardships. But COVID-19 has brought obstacles to them too.
“It’s been a challenge this year in a number of ways,” said Major William Garrett, spokesman for the Salvation Army in Central Kentucky.
Typically, he said the organization provides gifts to about 3,500 children each year through its Angel Tree. This year, 4,800 children were signed up.
At the same time, getting those children’s wish lists into the hands of donors willing to shop for them was harder than ever, he said, since fewer people were shopping at the mall and in other retail spots where they might choose a child’s name from the Angel Tree.
Need surpasses help from responding organizations
About 2,000 children’s tags didn’t get taken, said board member Jennifer Sisson.
She said the Lexington Fraternal Order of Firefighters donated toys that normally would have been distributed through the Toys for Tots program to the Angel Tree program, which helped a lot.
And Garrett said some people from the community showed up at the distribution center to drop off toys before pickup day. Others called to offer assistance.
Finding people to ring the bells for the Salvation Army’s Red Kettle Campaign was also harder than usual because of concerns about the virus, Garrett said.
Still, he said, “people are stepping up.”
“Most of the red kettles that have been coming in have been literally stuffed to the top,” he said, adding that the organization had been “seeing a lot more big bills, seeing a lot more checks.”
Josh DeSpain, who serves on the board of The Nest, said that organization had “several hundred more” kids than normal signed up this year for its Reindeer Express program, which provides toys, coats and other items.
“The need is all around,” said DeSpain, who was helping with the Salvation Army’s toy distribution. “I think everybody’s willing to sacrifice a little bit more this year than they normally would.”
Small business owners and individuals have jumped in to help each other in other ways too.
Tom Nieman, who owns Nieman’s Tree Farm, said he had some customers this year who had ordered a Christmas tree but later contracted COVID-19 and could not pick up the tree.
He’s been known to deliver the tree to the customer’s porch and not charge them anything.
“I wasn’t going to let somebody do without a tree just because they couldn’t come out,” he said.
He said it’s part of helping people the best way he can.
“There’s incredible need, but the giving has really kept up with it,” Garrett said. “This community is generous. ...People should be proud to live here.”
This story was originally published December 23, 2020 at 11:14 AM.
