Hartford Care celebrates Julymas

Hartford Care’s care homes have been in a festive mood, celebrating Julymas with parties and barbecues in the sunshine instead of the snow.

Due to the pandemic and visiting restrictions, our care homes were not able to properly celebrate Christmas with relatives and loved ones. Instead, we decided to invite our care homes to organise some Christmas-themed fun in the sun and they did not disappoint us with their wonderful celebrations.

At Springfield Nursing Home in Shanklin, Isle of Wight, everybody went full-on festive. They held a barbecue with pigs in beach towels, hot dogs and turkey, stuffing and cranberry rolls. Everyone dressed up in their Christmas fancy dress with the ladies and gentlemen there judging the best outfits. Mrs Claus also popped in to give out some gifts to the residents.

At Woodlands House in the New Forest, there was a Christmas-themed race afternoon. The events included bauble and spoon, pass the parcel, penguin waddle, Christmas wrapping challenge and a wheelchair relay.

The celebrations had an Australia Day theme at Malden House in Sidmouth where they enjoyed a barbecue and games, and Belford House in Four Marks made some summer Christmas decorations to take pride of place at their party.

Boulters Lock in Maidenhead had a garden barbecue with lots of singing and dancing along to ‘Elvis’, one of their favourite entertainers.

It was Aloha at The Laurels & Pine Lodge whose Julymas party had a Hawaiian theme for which everybody put on their hula skirts and lei necklaces and played games such as pin the tail on the mermaid.

West Cliff Hall in Hythe made special tie-dye tee-shirts to go with their Santa hats and ate turkey burgers during their barbecue. Vocalist Steve came to entertain them and they also had a visit from Popell Barns Mobile Farm.

Bethel House in Barton-on-Sea also organised a Julymas barbecue and Hartford Court enjoyed a Christmas party.

The care homes staged their events during the last two weeks of July but most of the activities took place over the weekend of 24^th to 26^th July.

Julymas was inspired by supermarket Aldi who started selling Christmas food in June to encourage people to celebrate Junemas.

Emma Jones, Hartford Care’s Operations Director, said: “We thought it would be a wonderful way for our residents and teams to enjoy a little bit of festive cheer during these very challenging times. It was fantastic fun for everyone, and we are delighted so many of our care homes put on special events for the occasion.”