Then when I headed back to my desk, everyone there was hurrying too. The Greene County Daily World office also closed at noon and as I was walking in, everyone else was walking out.

The GCDW spaces normally seem kind of cramped - unless you're there all by yourself. On most days there's busy-ness going on in every corner. But on Christmas Eve, even with all the lights turned on, the place was a little strange. All was quiet except for my keyboard and the crackling of the scanner traffic.

Then there was a knock on the back door - a delivery man who was working too. I've never accepted deliveries before, but I just acted like I knew what I was doing.

There will be lots of people working on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, including me.

Some things just can't close down and they go on no matter what the calendar says.

There will be policemen and women working or "on call" in all of our towns. And Indiana State Police troopers will be out on the highways.

There will be firefighters on station just like every other day, and the volunteer firefighters all over Greene County will still be carrying their pagers and will jump and run if there's a call.

The Greene County Ambulance Service will be working and so will large numbers of doctors and nurses, CNAs and all kinds of other health professionals at the hospital and in the nursing homes.

There will be dispatchers taking your calls at the Sheriff's Department, jailers seeing about the inmates, and the Greene County Sheriff's deputies and reserve deputies will be out on the roads like it's a normal day.

People may be working in restaurants, in convenience stores, in movie theaters.

State and county highway department workers may get called out to work on the roads - but we hope not this year.

And there will be people working in many daily newspaper offices too.

Although there won't be a newspaper published on Christmas Day here, there will be one for Friday which means we go to press during the night on Thursday just like always.

Besides me, my editor-in-chief will be working so that the rest of the newsroom can stay home. And late on Christmas, the pressroom crew will roll in to put out a paper.

It's not so bad. We're in good company - the people who work on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day are the ones who keep everything going for us in the times we need somebody the most.

So Merry Christmas to all of you Christmas workers! Here's hoping our holiday is a quiet one.