Comfort and joy take on a new meaning when your child is critically ill and you must spend the holidays far from home. Traditions with family and friends are all taken away and the spirit of the holidays is replaced with fear and worry.

While seeking life-saving medical care for their children, families turn to Cincinnati’s Ronald McDonald House so they can be together and close to the care their child needs. We offer them a room to call “home” while they need it. We provide home-cooked meals, snacks, activities and a community of other families who understand what they are going through.

During the holidays, we can bring them the comfort and joy they thought they would be missing. With your help, we can turn their fear and sadness into hope and love, where they feel the support from people they have never met and watch their children’s eyes light up with a new kind of magic.

For our families, when every moment matters, we know it’s the “little things” that mean so much. Over the holidays, we provide opportunities to make memories together: petting live reindeer; watching Santa come in on a fire truck; or holding a Polar Express night where we get our tickets, ring our bells and gather around a festive tree to hear the book being read. And by living in our House, families can still keep some of their own traditions going: baking cookies in our kitchen, hanging lights in their windows, or putting up a tree of their own or lighting a menorah.

We can’t change what these children and their families are going through. And we don’t lose sight of the stress, anxiety and fear they are experiencing. But we can be here for them to offer moments of comfort and joy when they need them most. We simply cannot do that without you. Support these families today.