For Christmas babies, nurses are Santa's elves

'It's just not fair."

That's what you hear from children who have their birthdays on or about Christmas Day.

Dec. 24, 1985, was the day my daughter Victoria Loughlin Fahey chose to come into the world, and I can't say I was all that happy about her timing, either. But I remember the day like it was yesterday.

My wife, Geri, had been baking chocolate chip cookies at a furious pace when I arrived home in mid afternoon to find the tell tale twinges had begun. Geri's sister, Carol Loughlin, and a few of the neighbors who had dropped by wore worried looks on their faces. "We think this might be it," Carol said.

But Geri was adamant she was not in labor because, she said, she "had too much work to be done." She admitted, though, that she "felt funny."

Now, when a woman who is 8 1/2 months pregnant says that, get thee to a hospital -- quickly. We rushed from our home in Milton to South Shore Hospital in Weymouth, and at about 5 p.m. Tory, as my daughter quickly came to be known, joined the ranks of the Christmastime babies whose birthdays, if you let them tell it, always get lost in the shuffle of Santa and the hoopla of the season.

Right after her birth, Tory was swaddled in a Christmas stocking with a tiny Santa hat. It's the sight that has stuck with me most after all these years -- that and the kindness of the nurses on duty at South Shore that night.

Far from feeling sorry for themselves for having to work on Christmas Eve, the nurses were full of holiday spirit, and trying with some special touches to make all the new mothers feel at home.

One nurse in particular couldn't have been nicer. She was Jewish, and she explained that the Jewish nurses and younger nurses at South Shore often volunteered to work Christmas Eve or Christmas Day to give colleagues celebrating the holiday with families the time off.

The younger nurses without families, she said, preferred to be off on New Year's Eve.

I took off when mother and daughter were finally settled, with Christmas carols playing softly over the loudspeakers and the lights in the lobby blinking, almost as if in celebration.

There were a ton of loose ends for a frazzled Santa Claus to tie up when I finally got home. After all, 2-year-old Meredith wouldn't understand if Santa was waylaid, no matter what the reason.

I wrapped up the last of the presents and stuffed the stockings well past midnight while watching the residents of Bedford Falls save Jimmy Stewart's bacon for the 99th time.

On Christmas morning, I packed up Meredith and a passel of presents and set out for the hospital. It was then that I saw Tory, along with all the other babies in the nursery, sporting the jolly red Christmas stocking cap.

Later, in the evening, I returned to the hospital with a late present for Geri -- turkey and the trimmings. A holiday Manhattan went along and snuck past security.

Over the years, we did our best so Tory could avoid the curse of the Christmas Child. She's had her own separate birthday party on Christmas Eve, complete with a cake and a separate but equal set of presents.

As with many families, some holidays are remembered with something other than joy. Geri Loughlin-Fahey died in April 1995, and Christmas that year was a puzzling mix of old and new rituals forever changed by the death of a loved one. But the Christmas Eve birthday party endured.

Tory Fahey turns 21 today. She is a lovely young woman, a junior at UMass-Boston, a good student, and I expect her to do great things. She has her mother's blue eyes and has inherited her talent when it comes to art.

She will forever be tied to Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed, and the kindness of those nurses at South Shore Hospital that Christmas Eve.

Christmas babies everywhere are indebted to them and others like them.

Milton resident Rich Fahey can be reached at faheywrite@yahoo.com.