How Your Global Team Can Celebrate the Holidays.

You Work Across Cultures Everyday. Your Holiday Celebration Should Represent Those Cultures.

As Published in Toastmaster Magazine, December 2024 (https://www.toastmasters.org/magazine/magazine-issues/2024/dec/celebrating-the-holidays)

Your organization’s success depends upon the hard work of its people, which is why it’s important to ensure that everyone feels valued, seen, and respected. This is especially true when bringing people together for special occasions, such as end-of-year holiday celebrations. Increasingly, many of us work in multicultural workplaces, so the variety of ways to commemorate the season needs to be welcomed into the celebration.

Just as having people from a variety of cultures brings new ways of thinking into the organization, holiday celebrations can be more interesting when you incorporate new ways of celebrating.

Partying only with Santa and his reindeer-sweatered helpers at a Christmas party does not represent other cultural holidays. Ignoring the different ways people on your team celebrate does not communicate “I understand and value you, and thank you for your unique contributions to the team.” In the workplace, it’s important to make everyone feel valued and welcomed.

As someone who has spent more than 25 years as an intercultural consultant, I’ve gathered some tips to help bring your holiday celebrations into the global 21st century. Here are my Top Eight favorites:

1 Understand that holiday symbols vary …