The Christmas Gift

You know Christmas is close when your Alexa tells you she has a new list of Christmas Classics for you to choose from. As long as she plays what she’s asked to and doesn’t add ‘other similar composers’ as she does when asked to play Tomaso Albinoni, she can stay on the shelf over Christmas. But if she adds ‘Jingle Bells’ or ‘Little Donkey’ to my Christmas music she will go straight to the back of the understairs cupboard until the new year. Christmas is when we celebrate God’s gift of His Son to us and is cheapened by tacky secular songs, but Christian music lifts our spirits to join with the angels in worship. For the believer living with dementia it can have a ‘quickening’ effect, as neurologist Oliver Sacks explains in this video. Christmas is like a time capsule that we open each year, a virtual container that holds precious mementos, photos, notes, and other memories that are dear to us, and it can be a powerful ‘reminiscence therapy’ for people with dementia.

Some years ago, I went with two of our care home managers for information and training at the Contented Dementia Trust in the Cotswolds. It was led by Penny Garner, the mother-in-law of clinical psychologist Oliver James who wrote the ground-breaking book ‘Contented Dementia’, based on Penny’s work as a professional carer. The theme of the book is the centre of all good dementia care today: it is to know the person and their history and relate to them appropriately instead of to the ‘challenging behaviour’. An example is that when Fred, startled by falling saucepans in the kitchen, dives under the table you know he’s reliving his wartime experience. You don’t tell him to stop being silly but you join him and wait with him for the all clear. The aim of good dementia care is to create a sense of security and contentment. When this happens it can enable an episode of ‘rementing’, when the person reappears for a short while through the fog with “a measurable recovery of powers that had apparently been lost.” (Kitwood, Dementia Reconsidered). This doesn’t always happen but when it does it confirms that even in the deepest dementia, the person remains.

During the training we were all asked to think about our most contented moment. There were about 20 of us, and most gave memories of walking on a beach during their honeymoon, or their wedding day, or the birth of a child, and listening to them I wondered what they would think of my answer. I needn’t have worried because all three of us gave the same - our most contented moment is still when we are held by God in worship. With its happy atmosphere and the familiar worship at Christmas time we can help people with dementia reach that ‘holding’ moment.

Let’s say it’s Grandma who is now living with dementia. She will be so glad to be with you at Christmas time. Find a quiet place for her to sit, perhaps in the corner where she won’t be overloaded with too much sensory input. Make sure family members greet her warmly and warn them not to correct her if she mistakes them for somebody else or doesn’t remember them. She may be ‘time-travelling’, but she’ll return to the present shortly.

Find time to go through old photographs and memorabilia with her, but be careful not to say, ‘Do you remember?’ Instead, just launch into the memory saying, for example, ‘Uncle Dick looks very happy in this photograph! It was taken the day that …’ We will be looking at more tactics in our special Zoom Meeting on Tuesday 15^th November at 2:30pm. Book your free place here.

For a family focus on Christmas that can include grandma we have produced a new version of Brain and Soul Boosting for Christmas which will be available very soon. It can be downloaded from our website – see our Resources section. It tells the Christmas story in a way that encourages participation from everyone.