Holiday traditions to warm you up this season, Part II

Earlier this week, we explored some of our staff’s favorite holiday traditions. As is the case with so many storied traditions, we learned some endearing, charming, and heart-warming things about the people we work with every single day.

The first batch of traditions opened the door for even more conversations with our colleagues, so we’re back with even more holiday traditions. Thanks for following along and contributing some of your own!

Gabrielle Miller, Events & Operations Manager at ZogCulture, New York

Cookies on cookies on cookies

“Every year, like two days before Christmas, my family gets together to make taralli, which is an Italian cookie. My three sisters, my mom, and I will spend about six hours making around 300 cookies. We’ll make the dough and everything else from scratch. We’ve been doing it for as long as I can remember, so definitely more than 30 years now. We do it because it’s been passed down from generations of Italian women. So my mom used to make them with her mother, who made it with her mother, who was born and raised in Italy, and so on and so forth.

“It’s a good thing we have four of us doing it because it’s super labor-intensive. One of us will man the oven, two of us will roll dough, the other one will take care of the babies or the animals and make sure no one’s coming into the kitchen. It’s definitely a team effort. We eat them throughout Christmas week, and my dad takes down 100 by himself.”

Chris Davis, General Manager, San Jose

Themed field day hijinx

“My cousin puts together a field day for the family on Thanksgiving before dinner. The staples are ladder ball, cornhole, and shots of Fireball — for some reason. It’s usually the younger generation participating, and at least one person doesn’t make it to the dinner table. My aunts and uncles are smart enough to opt out.

“We’ll do a theme with it, too. Last year we did a Christmas cowboy theme. Yeah, Christmas cowboy. This year we’re doing flannel so we’re just going to look like a family of lumberjacks.”

Joey Frankovic, Senior Business Growth Manager, New Jersey

It’s a food marathon not a sprint

“Obviously, our Thanksgiving is one thousand percent based on food. I think we do it a little differently because of the traditions my dad keeps. We’ll have the one standard Butterball turkey, but then my dad will also have a wild turkey that he hunted on the table as well. There’s not enough meat on the wild turkey to go around, so this year my mom made a turkey gravy from it, while my aunt made some gnocchi from scratch to go along with it. That’s an appetizer before the actual turkey. It’s a food marathon, man. I’ll try to squeeze a nap in there somewhere if I can.

“Usually a group of us will go on a long walk after the pasta course and before the turkey. We’ll walk for half an hour, find a park along the way, and just check in on everyone’s life and have deeper conversation. It’s a nice break from the chaos in the house.”

Sean Glynn, Sports Operations & Growth Manager , Washington, DC

Lighting your way

“My family will go to my aunt and uncle’s house around the holidays. About a week before Christmas, their neighborhood gets together as a community to fill up a bunch of paper bags with sand, put a candle in each bag, and light them up at dusk every night leading up to Christmas. So when you drive down the block, you just see this really awesome stretch of candles lighting your way. Sometimes a family will go away for a trip or there are elderly neighbors who can’t maintain the bags so the community will support each other and keep each other’s candles lit.”

Want to catch up on part one of this series? Check it out here.

And, we wish you all a warm, happy, healthy, and playful holiday season.