Nurses Sang Carols
The nurses enjoyed a breakfast served by candle light at 6:30 on Christmas morning at the Faxton Hospital in Utica, New York, and then exchanged greetings. After this, clad in their uniforms, including their blue capes, attractively red-lined, they formed in a procession and marched from floor to floor of the building singing the familiar Christmas songs. Young mothers and their little babies, in the maternity building, were not forgotten. The nurses marched from the main building in the cold morning and sang as they walked along the sidewalk until they reached the maternity department, where they continued their carols.
This self-appointed task conveyed pleasure beyond the power of words to express to the patients, some of whom were far away from loved ones. The act was one of those beautiful touches which unites the whole Christian world in a kindred feeling on Christmas Day.
The thoughtful hospitality of the Maier family in the village of Oberndorf, Germany, led one of the guests, the young priest Joseph Mohr, to write the well-known Christmas song,