Holiday Tales and Travels at The Oaks at Hampton Park

 Submitted by Lorraine Lane

 

This time of year is bustling with activity in the senior living facilities.  This was only our third visit to The Oaks at Hampton Park, and until now we had not experienced the best participation.  Joanie prepared an informative and interactive program about holidays around the world, coupled with portions that allowed us to reminiscence about some of our favorite family Christmases.

Charlotte had recently moved into The Oaks and was a delight during the program. She shared about her time in the various countries that were mentioned. Everyone laughed and commiserated when we shared about throwing handfuls of tinsel onto the tree when we were kids. As usual, we have a few residents that take a nap during the program, and we have learned not to take offense as they dream of sugar plums dancing in their heads.

Joanie and I demonstrated how to open a traditional English Christmas cracker to get that nice “pop”, then we gave Pete the prized purple crown. One of the highlights of the program was the Christmas song game in which we would sing the beginning of a verse and the residents would join in completing the verse.  The response to this was so remarkable that residents who were asleep woke up and joined in as we sang. Almost every time the residents would sing the entire song.  What a joy to see their faces aglow as we married our voices together.

As we finished up a song, one resident flung her arms up excitedly to share a story from her youth about her younger brothers who looked out the window and must have seen a family member dressed up as Santa. Her memory was one of them shouting, “I know who Santa Claus is!” followed by her reprimanding, “Don’t you tell anyone or he won’t come!”

You often hear about the power of music, especially with seniors. We were delighted to witness it first hand with this program and are eager to share it again at three more facilities this month.