Maid at Christmas

[Xmas]

Hi!
What does your maid to at Christmas if she is not flying back? Is there a Christmas mass and celebration she can attend? Or do most of the employers invite her to celebrate with them? I'm just thinking if could be a difficult situation with all the presents and expensive food....not appropriate?
Thanks for any input!

[Day off]

It's a public holiday, so she has the day off. I'm sure she goes to mass and then meets up with her friends for the day.

[free time]

If she's from the Philippines then she's probably Catholic and will already know about any church services she wants to go to and like the PP says, it will be her day off anyway being a public holiday so she'll no doubt have plans.  It's a Saturday this year too so perhaps that will mean that she gets two days off - I suppose that's up to you and how much privacy you want for family time, but she might not want the Sunday off if her friends haven't also got the day off - you'll have to ask her.

As for the rest of the Christmas period, it's just treated like any public holiday over here and everyone goes back to work again on the next working day which will be the Monday so she'll probably just expect to work as normal.

[NMS1]

If you have young children who she looks after and they open presents on Christmas Day morning it might be nice to involve her in that. Buy a present for her from the children and let her join in the fun. I'm sure even if they have friends here they still miss their families at times like this.

We did that last year as the children didn't end up opening their presents until late afternoon by which time she was home so she sat down with them and tried some of our Christmas goodies like mince pies & Christmas cake which she hadn't tried before

[trax]

We had a big breakfast all together on Christmas morning, which we all helped to prepare.  We then opened our presents with the children under the tree.  I bought our helper some small bits and pieces so she didn't feel left out (hand cream/nail files etc), and we also gave her a months salary as a bonus (she didn't stop smiling after that).

We then went off for Christmas lunch and she went to a friends house for a lunch and party with lots of other friends of her.

[to the 2 PP's]

That's really nice and makes a change from some of the views and actions often promoted on this site towards maids.

Good on you and a very merry Christmas to you and your families.