While sitting at home this Christmas each of us might stop to wonder how the power is still on or the hospitals are still open. If we venture out into the cold we might give thanks that there are still gas stations or stores doing business.

There are many different ways to look at working through the holidays. For those of us at home with our families, the idea of having to work Christmas Day might seem pretty glum. For others it might be fun, it might just be another day or it might even be better than having the day off.

At St. Alexius Medical Center, they can't close down for holidays. It's an inevitable part of working in medicine.

"My son said to me, he won't go into medicine because he doesn't want to work holidays and weekends and 12-hour shifts," said Connie Renz, a registered nurse in St. Alexius Medical Center's emergency room.

After 24 years with St. Alexius, Renz doesn't let working Christmas Day get her down.

"Holidays are actually kind of a fun time to work," Renz said. "Many times we'll do kind of a potluck within our own departments and just sort of make it a little bit festive."

Renz, her husband and their four college-age sons have six different schedules to work around in planning their holiday festivities.

"When we're all together we just sort of pick a day that will work for all of our schedules, with the college and their work schedules and our work schedules," Renz said.

Meanwhile, upstairs in the intensive care unit, there is festive decor, even a Christmas tree.

Amanda Gartner, a registered nurse who has worked with St. Alexius for almost two years, is ready for her first Christmas working in the ICU.

"I've worked in health care for a while. You never really get a day off, so you have to work holidays, but it's my first Christmas with a young child at home," Gartner said.

"We celebrate Christmas Eve, so I have Christmas Eve off and then get off at 7:30 (p.m. Christmas Day) so I'm sure we'll have a Christmas supper."

Each unit in the hospital has its own way of handling the holiday scheduling. In the ICU, they work every third holiday and then there are holiday benefits. Nurses in the ICU get time and a half for working holidays, and they also get "holiday hours," which they can use to take time off later.

St. Alexius also offers a special holiday meal for the employees who have to work on Christmas and also those employees' families.

At Dakota Gasification, northwest of Beulah, technicians get double time and a half for working Christmas Day, but it's pretty much business as usual.

"By the time you get out there, you don't even know that it's Christmas," said Gaylen Jensen, a shift supervisor in the chemical lab.

For Jensen working Christmas is "just the luck of the draw." He works in shifts of four days on, four off, rotating nights and days. Whichever shift lands on Christmas, that's crew that has to work it, but it's not all glum.

There is a kitchen in the lab, and employees usually bring something special for a Christmas meal, Jensen said.

In Bismarck, Enable is a fun place to stop on Christmas, or any holiday for that matter.

Enable is a Bismarck agency that helps disabled people to live as normal of lives as they can. Naturally, they can't just abandon the clients who don't have family to go home to for holidays.

"What a lot of people do, if they work with someone who doesn't have family or doesn't have family that lives near, a lot of times they just have a big celebration with those people," said Deb Hennager, residential supervisor for Enable.

Some employees even take their clients home to celebrate with their own families.

"A lot of the people that I know have worked with the people that they care for for a long time and they're just like part of the family."

On a normal Christmas Day, the staff at Enable willcome in and start making food for the holiday and might even bring in presents so that their clients will have some to open.

"Most of the people, they don't care what they get, it's just like, 'oh, I got presents!' " … It's just like, 'somebody cares about me'," Hennager said.

From the joy on Hennager's face, it is apparent that working Christmas Day at Enable isn't like working at all.

"Really, if you're working with someone on Christmas it's not any different than it would be if you were at your own home," Hennager said.

They work very hard to make sure that their clients have a great holiday.

"To me, if you had to work on a holiday, having a job like that (Enable) is the best job to work," Hennager said.