On Christmas Day, a sign that reads “closed” will hang in the windows of most of the restaurants and boutiques in Athens.
But for local movie theaters, Christmas is the busiest day of the season.
The three movie theaters in the Athens area — the Athena Grand, Athena Cinema and Fun Barn — will be open for business on Christmas Day to accommodate those who wish to see a film for the holiday.
Despite it being a holiday, Rick Frame, the owner of the Athena Grand, has no difficulties staffing the movie theater for the influx of patrons who walk through its doors, he said. Employees of the theater sign up for what holidays they want to work, he added.
“We do a sign-up … and we allow the employees to sign up for what days they want to work, so it’s a volunteer thing,” Frame said.
On a typical busy day, Frame said he schedules up to 12 people for various shifts throughout the day. Because the theater does not open until 3:30 p.m. on Christmas Day, Frame schedules half of the usual workers.
“(Christmas) is a very big day, but I will schedule six or seven people,” he said.
Frame said if there are not enough volunteers, he and his family will help, but there are usually enough people who want to work. It is easy to staff the theater on Christmas because some of the employees do not celebrate Christmas or they are not from the Athens area, he added.
Those who work on Christmas Day receive a surprise bonus, Frame said, and when the employee signs up, they do not know they will get a bonus.
“So this year, we will pay people that work on Christmas double time. Now, they don’t know that either,” he said. “We don’t have to do that, but it’s something that we feel like we can afford to do.”
One employee working on Christmas Day this year at the Athena Grand is Jordan Dean, a resident of Athens. Dean has worked on Christmas Day for the past three years, he said.
“I actually really don’t partake in Christmas,” he said. “My family really has never celebrated Christmas, so I go into work whenever I can, and I enjoy the work.”
Dean believes the influx in customers is due to families coming together to celebrate Christmas, he said, and it is a good activity after opening gifts and “exchanging of hugs and whatnot.” Because the theater is currently screening the new Star Wars film and Moana, Dean said that attributes to an increase in customers.
“The hardest part is the amount of people that come in, and the easiest part are the people that come in,” he said. “People are typically very merry, so to speak, on Christmas Day, so people are much more forgiving.”
When Frame became the owner of the Athena Grand, he said he was surprised by the amount of people who participate in the holiday tradition.
“Until I owned this movie theater, I had no idea that people went to movies (on Christmas Day),” he said. “We have found, that after doing this for 11 years, that it certainly is a big tradition. There’s big groups that come — not only the whole immediate family, but the extended family.”
