Making Christmas work

Philadelphia Inquirer, The, December, 2006 by Karen Heller

Think it's hard planning for the holidays? Hah! Relatively speaking, most people's issues amount to a Christmas sugar cookie. Meet the Williams family, seven members in the extended clan, six employed at Albert Einstein Medical Center, all working varied shifts, weekends, nights, five toiling Christmas Day.

For them, food preparation began this week, baking long into the night. The entire brood, 40 gathering Monday, ages 2 to 73, has Christmas down to a science - a very festive science. No Excel spreadsheets or chain lists are necessary. This is the way it's long been done. "I probably wouldn't know what to do with myself if I had Christmas off," says Charlene Williams, an Einstein employee of 35 years, who works in the kitchen like her mother before her, preparing 1,440...