While many stay home for the holiday, nibbling hams or clinking classes or tearing into piles of gifts, hundreds of workers will clock in for a Christmas Eve or Christmas Day shift, ensuring that others can have a merry — and safe — holiday.

Health care workers, police officers, and pastors, funeral home directors and tow truck drivers will all work the holiday shift.

Homeless shelter and drug treatment center staff, hotel workers, corrections officers, 911 operators, and journalists — all keep the wheels of Northeast Michigan turning, even on a holiday.

The workers and volunteers who give up their holidays for the sake of their jobs have to make adjustments at home, tweaking beloved traditions — even inviting St. Nick to arrive a day early — for the sake of their children, spouses, and other loved ones.

News Photo by Julie Riddle Alpena EZ Mart employees Irvan Cramer, left, and Alley Reid tend to the store between customers on Monday evening.

“Santa comes special for those who have to work on Christmas Day,” said Tim Slosser, firefighter/paramedic with the Alpena Fire Department who will work on Christmas Day.

The crew members assigned to the day cover for each other when they can, trying to get those with young kids home for gift opening and other important moments of the day.

Mostly, though, the firefighters, like many other Alpena-area workers, accept that holidays mean spending the day with their work family instead of at home.

Spouses and kids are welcome at the traditional Christmas Day meal in the Alpena Public Safety Facility kitchen. This year, the menu includes sausage and sauerkraut, with macaroni and cheese for those who don’t like the Polish stuff.

Three Christmasses ago, said Doug Keogh, dinner was five minutes from being dished up when the firehouse tones sounded, sending the firefighters springing for their vehicles while their families were left to enjoy the meal without them.

News Photo by Julie Riddle Firefighter/paramedic Doug Keogh sips coffee behind a Charlie Brown Christmas tree at the Alpena Public Safety Facility on Sunday.

The firefighters reminisced about throwing wrapped Christmas gifts out the front windows of a house as fire consumed the back. They wanted to help the family suffering such a loss hold on to at least some holiday joy, they said.

Other holidays have meant medical runs to tend to someone hit in the eye by a newly unwrapped flying toy or responding to a call for help extricating a bead from a nose.

Being away on important days can be hard on anyone. But, said Chris Morrison as he sat at the firehouse dining table waiting to be needed, “We go into the job to help people. It doesn’t matter when or where or why.”

Other holiday workers, even without sirens and fire gear, help people through their Christmas emergencies, too.

From utility workers ready to scramble up poles during a Christmas storm to grocery store clerks ringing up a last-minute can of cream of mushroom soup, many Northeast Michiganders become heroes on holidays.

News Photo by Julie Riddle From left, firefighter/paramedics Abby Smith, Tim Slosser, Doug Keogh, and Chris Morrison chat in the Alpena Fire Department kitchen around a scraggly Christmas tree on Sunday.

To a harried traveler with an empty tank, few beacons beam as brightly as gas station employees working late on a holiday.

At the Alpena E-Z Mart on Chisholm Street, trainee Alley Reid said she’s not worried about working on the holiday, knowing her 8-month-old and 2-year-old daughters will understand.

For Irvan Cramer, who works Christmas Eve, the holiday will be a little tougher. With his busy work schedule, he only sees his 7-year-old son on the weekends, and they may not get to spend much of Christmas Day together.

The community needs him to show up for work, though, “to help people get the things they need before the big day.” Cramer said. “That’s the way I look at it.”