For many of us, spending Christmas day with our loved ones in a cozy, decorated home, enjoying
traditional food and deserts, playing music, and exchanging gifts and stories is the climax of the
Christmas season advent. For the 73,000+ soldiers who will be deployed during Thanksgiving, Christmas, and the New Year, the holidays look a lot different.
The men and women that will be deployed in more than 170 different countries across the globe this
holiday season will spend it with their fellow military personnel. For our soldiers across seas and for
their families at home, the Christmas season can feel incomplete and be very difficult to endure. Many
of the countries where they’re stationed don’t even celebrate Thanksgiving or Christmas.
Despite the challenges of spending these special days apart from their loved ones, US troops still make
the best of the Holiday season by calling their families, eating Holiday dinners with each other, sharing
photos and stories, singing carols in chapel, making holiday decorations, and playing festive music.
Many bases host a 5k or 10k run on the holidays for their troops to participate in. The holidays they spend deployed overseas to protect who and what they love are certainly among the most memorable. There is a mixture of loneliness from missing their families that can be lessened by the support from their fellow comrades and from the people like us, who are at home in the United States, that express how thankful we are for their sacrificial service.
Related article: Celebrating the Holidays in 2021
Here, at Sinclair, we will be helping to support our deployed troops who won’t get to spend this holiday
season with their families through Operation Holiday Greetings, where we will be sending cards to active-duty service members. You can stop by any of the following locations on the Dayton campus to
sign a few cards or write some encouraging messages.
Operation Holiday Greetings
Monday, Nov. 14, at 11 a.m. – 1 p.m. in the Tartan Marketplace on the Dayton Campus
Monday, Nov. 21 at 10:30 a.m. – noon in Building 1 & 2 walkway on the third floor
Wednesday, Nov. 30 at 11:30 a.m. – 1:30 p.m. in the NE Loggia, outside the Tartan Marketplace
You can also stop by at the Library’s front desk or in the Military Family Education Center (10-444) at any
time to sign some cards.
Heaven Diastello
Reporter