SALT LAKE CITY – After the year we had, even Santa needed some night start.
That’s why he visited the Salt Lake City LDS Hospital Thursday night instead of Friday morning.
I wanted to make sure health workers received an early gift.
Santa also visited the children’s primary hospital and the University of Utah hospital on Thursday.
DoorDash and Uber Eats have nothing in Santa. He got an advantage for Christmas by delivering food to hospital health workers. He knows not everyone goes down on Christmas Eve and wanted to thank him. @ KSL5TV at 10. #ksltv#MerryChristmasEvepic.twitter.com/wXVSDZGCmS
– Alex Cabrero (@KSL_AlexCabrero) December 25, 2020
He was delivering pizzas and boxes of snacks to health workers who can’t take the day off.
Emergencies do not pay attention to calendars.
“That was the best way to figure out how to offer some joy to the people who have to work,” he said.
It’s a Christmas Eve tradition that David Lamb has been doing for years.
Lamb dresses up as Santa and hands out food to the health workers. “You can spread goodwill and cheer yourself up,” he said. “And I love Christmas.”
Lamb said he remembers how hard his mother-in-law worked for two decades at Dixie Regional Medical Center in southern Utah.
“We were going to spend Christmas on St. George’s Day and we were waiting for him to open presents and come home exhausted because he was doing work,” Lamb said. “So my wife and I decided that was what we would do. We wanted to give them some joy and thank them for working.”
Lamb usually bakes and takes these products to the hospitals.
However, this year, thanks to that large coal field known as COVID-19, he brought them pizzas and snack boxes.
She knows nurses and doctors have had a tough year.
“Our healthcare workers have been very stressed and if we can add a little bit of something to their lives this evening, a little bit of gratitude for what they do, that makes me feel good,” he said.
Also, you never know when a trip down a chimney may require a visit to the hospital.
Maybe Santa is buttering them just in case. But even if he doesn’t visit an emergency, he knows medical workers care for other patients.
And they won’t go hungry doing it.
“They appreciate it a lot,” Lamb said. “They’re grateful that people remember them.”
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Alex Cabrero