{"id":1516,"date":"2011-12-16T04:04:18","date_gmt":"2011-12-15T17:04:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/inthenews\/?p=1516"},"modified":"2015-04-29T13:56:57","modified_gmt":"2015-04-29T03:56:57","slug":"santa-lights-up-the-first-christmas-at-the-new-royal-childrens-hospital","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/santa-lights-up-the-first-christmas-at-the-new-royal-childrens-hospital\/","title":{"rendered":"Santa lights up the first Christmas at the new Royal Children’s Hospital"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Santa officially launched Christmas at the new Royal Children\u2019s Hospital (RCH) this morning by turning on the lights of the huge Christmas tree in the hospital\u2019s atrium, Main Street.<\/p>\n

This impressive nine-metre tree was lovingly created, designed and donated by the team at Kmart \u2013 an official Christmas partner of the RCH \u2013 and features life-sized animal decorations to complement the hospital\u2019s interior design, which draws upon Australian flora and fauna.<\/p>\n

Patients and visitors enjoyed sitting with Santa in his oversized Christmas chair posing for photos and taking the opportunity to share their Christmas lists with him.<\/p>\n

Managing Director of Kmart, Guy Russo, said he was proud of Kmart\u2019s association with the hospital through fundraising arm, the RCH Foundation, at Christmas.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlmost four years ago Kmart began donating toys to help the children at the world famous Royal Children\u2019s Hospital Melbourne in the hope that we would encourage some wonderful smiles on the children\u2019s faces when they woke up Christmas morning,\u201d Mr Russo said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis year we have been able to go that one step further, building a beautiful festive tree for the hospital\u2019s Main Street.\u00a0 We truly hope it warms people\u2019s hearts and takes the children\u2019s and visitors\u2019 minds off the challenges they face during the festive season,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The tree was 12 months in the making and involved briefings with architects and interior designers of the new RCH.\u00a0 Christmas tree designers Dovecote worked with Kmart to develop the beautiful tree and submitted a number of design options before the final magnificent signature tree was selected.<\/p>\n

The tree took a mammoth 10 hours to set up.\u00a0 It comes to life every hour when the animals surrounding the tree move to music.<\/p>\n

Kmart also donated 60 Christmas trees to decorate the wards and family areas of the hospital.\u00a0 A bevy of around 40 Kmart team members and 30 Pied Pipers members volunteered many hours last weekend to set up the trees, decorating them according to the design theme of each hospital floor.\u00a0 The Pied Pipers have been a longstanding Christmas supporter of the hospital, putting up decorations for more than 40 years.<\/p>\n

RCH CEO Professor Christine Kilpatrick said Santa\u2019s sneak peak at the new hospital today served a second purpose.<\/p>\n

\u201cToday\u2019s visit doubled as an important scoping exercise for Santa, who wanted to familiarise himself with our new hospital before his visit to patients on Christmas Day,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe certainly don\u2019t want patients thinking Santa will lose his way trying to navigate the new hospital.\u00a0 I\u2019m pleased to say Santa has marked his route and will be at the hospital Christmas morning with a special present for every patient.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Christmas Day, Santa will arrive at the RCH with members of the Metropolitan Fire Brigade\u2019s (MFB) \u2018Once A Year Club\u2019 in new and antique fire trucks.\u00a0 Santa will visit every patient laden with presents donated by Kmart, while the MFB band will entertain the wards playing Christmas carols.<\/p>\n

\u201cBeing in hospital at Christmas is never a parent\u2019s wish for their child and so we go to great lengths to make Christmas as special as possible for patients and families, as well as staff,\u201d Professor Kilpatrick said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are extremely fortunate to have the support of generous companies and organisations such as Kmart, the MFB and the Pied Pipers at Christmas time.\u00a0 Thanks to them, our first Christmas in our new home will indeed be a special one,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Santa arrived at the RCH to spread some festive joy and light our beautiful nine-metre Christmas tree in Main Street<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":42,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-in-the-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/42"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1516"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1516\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1534,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1516\/revisions\/1534"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}