When my first child was born, I realized that I wanted to make each holiday memorable. I don’t mean grand and glorious (although that may naturally be part of the beautiful holiday season), but rich with family experiences and rituals. I set about researching each holiday and finding lots of ideas. I quickly ran into the problem of trying to find all of the gems I’d discovered last year again this year. Also, I would try some things and they worked wonderfully for our family (holiday experiences advent calendar), but some were miserable failures (blueberry cranberry sauce). With each child, the holidays seem to get more and more complicated. Layers of tradition that I did not want to be forgotten made holiday organization all the more necessary.

It was time to find a permanent and convenient home for the lists and planning pages that I had been collecting from holidays gone by. I purchased a 3-ring binder, some tabbed dividers with pockets, a zippered pouch, and a ream of printer paper. Then I gathered my 3-hole punch, pens, and materials to begin my holiday organizational manual. Now not only did I gain a place to store all magazine articles, craft ideas, recipes, and pictures of decorations, but I now have a handbook in which to plan my attack. Here are some of the pages most vital to any promising holiday handbook.

• Calendar Page -

  A blank December Calendar lets me plan how best to use the days leading up to Christmas to my best advantage. Armed with a calendar, I can project when I need to make my cards, when cards and gifts need to be mailed, which weekend would be best for our annual holiday party, what the last feasible shopping day should be, which date the annual pageant will be on, and so on.

• Holiday Card List –

  A numbered page with blank lines that I can fill in the names of those to whom we are sending our family’s cards. This is an invaluable page to me as I can refer to it next year when preparing to send out cards again. No more starting lists from scratch and no more hunting for last year’s list.

• Holiday Gift List –

  Get this list started just after the holidays. Use it to write down ideas for next year’s gifts as they come up. If your daughter tells you that she wants a certain kind of doll, don’t leave it to your memory. Then as you purchase gifts for your family, write it down. The best way not to over-gift someone is to keep a record.

• Gifts Received List –

  The sweaters knitted by Great-Aunt Mildred, the cash given by Grandpa Henry, or the fruitcake baked by a childhood friend all can be recorded on this handy list as a way of looking back and remembering how loved you and your family have been over the years. This list also makes it easy when preparing to write holiday Thank You cards.

• Holiday Guest List –

  If you plan an annual holiday party, then you’ll be needing some guests to fill your house with love and laughter. This is the page you will use to keep track of invitations you send and RSVPs you receive.

• Holiday Party Planner –

  Prepare for the big day by plotting it all out on paper first. Use this page to help you decide what type of party you will throw, what food and drinks to serve, and what the preparation and party timeline will be.

• Holiday Meal Planner –

  There are some who believe that it is not a holidays without a special meal. Use this page to plot out your family’s favorite traditional dishes. Include recipes, a timeline for meal preparation, and details (such as table decorations, music, and seating plan).

• Holiday Memories –

  This is one of my favorite pages. This is the place you will get to record the best and most memorable parts of the holiday. You should try to include old and new traditions, parties you attended, ornaments and decorations made or bought, holiday movies enjoyed, holiday music played, and memorable stories told.

Jennifer Tankersley is the creator of http://ListPlanIt.com where you can find almost 250 lists, checklists, and planning pages (including all of the pages described above) to put your world-and your holidays-in order.

Many villages had a large central bell in the middle of town. When an important occasion arrived, such as Christmas, villagers would ring the bell. It became commonplace for children to ring bells in celebration of Christmas. Most families had bells back then, and since they were known to be a celebratory sound, most parents didn’t mind their children making a ruckus with their constant bell ringing during the holiday.

Now, people hang bells on their front doors so they’ll ring out cheerfully to announce visiting guests, and children the world over know that Santa’s reindeer wear bells so he can locate them in bad weather or darkness of night. Many popular Christmas carols such as Jingle Bells are a staple song during the holiday season. We also traditionally ring in the New Year with bells as well.

Today church bells ring throughout the world on Christmas Eve, not to drive off evil spirits, but to welcome in the spirit of Christmas with joyful noise.  In Scandinavia, bells signal the end of work and the beginning of celebration. People in England recognize the tolling of the devil’s knell as the sound that welcomes the birth of Christ, where in Italy and Spain, it signals the beginning of Midnight Mass.

It’s highly likely that egg nog originated in Europe, although some believe it originated in the original American colonies who added rum. Therefore it’s not strictly just a holiday drink, but more of winter time drink. However, it is mostly served during both Christmas and New Year’s Eve.

Modern eggnog typically consists of milk, eggs, and sugar mixed together and may be served with or without added spirits. Other ingredients include spices such as nutmeg, cinnamon, or allspice, and frequently the substitution of cream for some portion of the milk, making a much richer drink. Whiskey, rum, brandy, or cognac can be added to eggnog.

Originally served warm, egg nog has been served cold and without alcohol since the mid 1960s, both of which are significant departures from its historical origins. It’s even available in a soy-based formula for those with dairy allergies or who are vegan.

Egg nog has long been the drink of choice to toast the holiday season. So hoist a cup and have a happy holiday season!

The candy cane dates back over 300 years and was originally a straight, hard, and all-white candy stick. Around the seventeenth century, Christians in Europe began to adopt the use of Christmas trees as part of their Christmas celebrations. They made special decorations for their trees from foods like cookies and sugar stick candy. The first historical reference to the familiar cane shape goes dates as far back as 1670 when the choirmaster at the Cologne Cathedral in Germany, bent the sugar sticks into canes to represent a shepherd’s staff, then handed them out to children during nativity services. This custom of handing out candy canes during Christmas services spread throughout Europe and later to America.

The peppermint candy with red stripes first appeared in the mid-19th century in the Swedish town of Granna, and striped candy canes in the early 20th century. The first historical reference to the candy cane being in America goes back to 1847, when August Imgard, a German immigrant, decorated the Christmas tree in his Ohio home with candy canes. It’s not clear who came up with the idea of striping candy canes, but it’s known that Christmas cards prior to the year 1900 showed only all-white candy canes, where Christmas cards after 1900 showed illustrations of striped candy canes.

It’s about that same time that candy makers began adding peppermint and wintergreen flavors to their candy canes, which grew to become traditional favorite flavors.

In the 1950’s a Catholic priest named Gregory Keller invented a machine to automate candy cane production.

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The first tradition we have at our home is that of buying a wonderful and decorative calendar to hang on our wall. Sometimes we are given one for the holidays, other times we purchase our own. Every New Year’s Day I remove our old calendar and hang our new one. In the process, I first copy over any important family dates such as birthdays or anniversaries which I need to remember throughout the New Year.

Many people set out to celebrate New Year’s Day by making resolutions which they really don’t have any real desire to fight to keep going throughout the year. If you have ever been in a health club or gym in January, then you know how many people can be there that you will never see again come February. It would be almost funny, if it wasn’t so sad.

The key to making your New Year’s resolutions and having them become reality in your life is to start small and really dedicate yourself to what you want to change in your life. If you are overweight, or even simply want to get into better shape, start with eating better and walking around your own neighborhood before you shell out the big money for a membership to a gym.

Another good way to spend your New Years Day is to take the opportunity of the New Year to clean out and purge your living quarters. It is very common to bring home your gifts from holiday celebrations and then have no where to put them. By doing some much needed de-cluttering and purging you can have space for all of your new treasures and make some nice donations of your unused items as well. Two of the best places to get rid of your unwanted items are through your local thrift store or freecycle.org. Thrift stores will generally take just about anything which they can re-sell to others. With freecycle.org you send out an e-mail to your local area and the person interested in what you have to offer will come pick-up your unwanted items. Both your thrift store and freecycle.org are good ways to keep your unwanted items out of the landfill.

In our home, we spend New Years Day first transferring the calendar, and then we move into the kitchen where we go through all of our cabinets and take a good inventory of what is in each of them. For things we have a lot of, we make an effort to use some of it up in the next few months. For things we will need to purchase we put them on our master shopping list. While we are in the kitchen we also try to find items which make good donations to our local food pantry. For instance, if I have been getting great buys on soup and have 30 cans of it, I will usually give half to our local food pantry and keep the rest to cover us for the rest of winter.

On addition to some of the suggestions above, it is always a good idea to look at the New Year as a time of renewal and a time when you can make changes to your life. However, rather than having lofty resolutions which you cannot keep, start small and make goals to change things over the next year or even longer. By making realistic goals you can change the things in your life that you choose to.

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Planning on having karaoke is one excellent activity for a New Years Eve party. This activity encourages guest participation and allows the guests to entertain themselves throughout the evening. In fact karaoke can even provide a very cost effective form of entertainment for all the guests even those who opt not to participate. Karaoke will provide the guests with music and singing at a much lower price than it would cost to hire a live band or a DJ for the event. The music may not be as high quality as it would be if you hired a professional but of course that is also part of the fun of karaoke.

Hosting a murder mystery event is another fun activity idea which is becoming very popular for New Years Eve parties. These events are typically a dinner theater where guests are encouraged to participate in the drama and work together or alone to try to solve the mystery of the evening. You can either hire a troop of actors to perform the murder mystery and allow the guests to interact with the actors to try to solve the mystery or you can assign guests to portray different characters including the victim, the murderer and the other guests. The guests should keep their identities a secret to keep everyone else guessing.

The food can also be a source of entertainment for the guests at a New Years Eve party. You can serve items such as fondue which require the guests to participate in the preparation of the food. Another idea for an activity is to design a party where the preparation of the food is a part of the party. For example you could hire a sushi chef to come to the party and teach the guests how to make sushi. The guests can all make their own sushi rolls and the sushi prepared by the guests can be served as appetizers during the party.

Activities as simple as viewing movies can even be fun activities for a New Years Eve party. If your party has a particular theme, you can select a series of movies which reflect the theme of the party to keep your guests entertained throughout the movie. You might even serve foods which are typically found at a movie theater to tie the theme of the event to the food.

If the New Years Eve party will include children it is important to spend some time planning activities for the kids. You might want to include some kid friendly activities as well as activities which are suitable for children and adults. If there will be adults in attendance there should also be activities just for the adults as well to ensure everyone has a good time.

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A Christmas carol is a song or hymn whose lyrics are about Christmas or the winter season. They are traditionally sung in the period before and during Christmas. The tradition of Christmas carols hails back as far as the thirteenth century, although carols were originally communal songs sung during celebrations like harvest tide as well as Christmas. Christmas carols and caroling in the old world was a mix of singing and dancing and was practiced for all festivals throughout the year.

When Christmas was firmly established to be celebrated on December 25, many of the existing songs were sung on that day and new ones written to celebrate Christmas.  St. Francis of Assisi was instrumental in making the Christmas celebration one for the people instead of just for the clergy.  He created large nativity scenes outside of his church and translated many of the Christmas carols from Latin into languages spoken by the average person and encouraged them to sing these songs to express their joy during the Christmas season. This practice of singing Christmas songs outside of the church near the nativity scenes spread throughout Europe and it was a natural next step for these Christmas carolers to start walking through the neighborhoods around the churches sharing their festive songs. 

But why are they called carols instead of songs? A popular urban legend was that they were named after a little girl named Carol Poles who disappeared in 1888 in the Whitechaple district of London. According to the legend, the little girl was reported missing around Christmas and many people went searching for her at night. Due to fears concerning Jack the Ripper, the group would sing Christmas carols upon knocking in order to declare their good intentions.

And even in today’s changing world, caroling is a Christmas tradition many people still hold dear.

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Kwanzaa is build on seven principles which are collectively known as “Nguzo Saba.” These seven principles are:

1. umoja – unity
2. kujichagulia – self-determination
3. ujima – collective work and responsibility
4. ujamaa – cooperative economics
5. nia – purpose
6. kuumba – creativity
7. mani – faith

Dr. Karenga developed Kwanzaa from elements of various African heritages. The African version of the Kwanzaa ceremony was used to show appreciation for the “first fruits of harvest.” The African Kwanzaa was made up of four basic elements which were; unity, awareness of ancestry and heritage, recommitment to traditional values, and reverence for creator and the creation.

The modern celebration of Kwanzaa lasts for seven days, beginning on December 26th and ending on January 1st of each year. Each of the seven days of the celebration is dedicated to the seven principles listed above. Each day has a colored candle which represents it. They are all held in a candelabrum known as the kinara.

The seven days and their associated candles and principles are:

Day 1 – middle candle – Black – Umoja – Unity
Day 2 – innermost red candle – Kujichagulia – Self-determination
Day 3 – innermost green candle – Ujima – Collective Work and Responsibility
Day 4 – middle red candle – Ujamaa – Cooperative Economics
Day 5 – middle green candle – Nia – Purpose
Day 6 – outermost red candle – Kuumba – Creativity
Day 7 – outermost green candle – Imani – Faith

The candelabra is placed on a straw mat known as the mkeka. Next to it are placed ears of corn, called vibunzi with one ear of corn to represent each child in the household. Also placed on the straw mat is a fruit basket called mazao, and a unity cup called the kikonbe cha umoja.

On the evening of the last day of the Kwanzaa celebration, a feast called Karamu is held. The evening generally starts with a welcome message, followed by a rememberance of ancestry, a seassessment of situations, a recommitment to values, a rejoicing, a farewell statement and a call for greater unity among all people.

Finally, the last day of Kwanzaa, Imani, the focus is shifted to honoring traditions and reaffirmation of self throug gift giving to others. Kwanzaa gifts tend to be hand-made rather than store bought, and should reflect creativity because it is one of the seven principles of Kwanzaa.

It is very important to understand that the purpose of Kwanzaa is not about giving gifts or a religious celebration. Kwanzaa is simply a commermoration of African heritage and a celebration of togetherness. Kwanzaa is a time for families and friends to come together and celebrate. In addition, the guiding principles of Kwanzaa are meant to bring our more solidary society back together as a group. Kwanzaa aims to bring people together and reunify families and friends in a way that no other African tradition can here in the United States and elsewhere in the world.

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If your company holiday parties have become a little ho hum over the years, perhaps it is time to shake things up a bit. Consider adopting a theme to help this year’s party to be the best yet. Spread the word that this year’s party is “A Winter Wonderland” and let the good times begin !

The DJ
Hiring a DJ for this type of party can make the difference between a night to remember and a night too quickly forgotten. The DJ does more than play the songs you hope to hear. It is important to realize that he or she will actually set the pace for the night and guide the guests through an evening of fun. Trust the DJ to encourage the wallflowers to participate in the evening’s various activities, to draw attention to particular highlights during the night, to coordinate the meal and generally just ensure that all party guests have a wonderful time.

The Decor
Set the stage for an evening of fun by decking the halls in wintry decor. Light blue and white are a perfect color scheme for a winter theme. Use this combination wherever you have a color choice to make: the table linens, drink napkins, etc. Sprinkle sparkling white confetti here and there and drape as many things as you can think of in shiny white tree garland. Add a few well placed snowmen (from the local craft store) and you will have transformed the room into the perfect winter scene.

The Music
Christmas music will of course be the choice for the night, but consider including classic carols from Sinatra and his contemporaries to really bring out the theme of the night.

The Games
Too many games can take a corporate party from professional to elementary in a hurry, but some clever and well chosen activities might be just the thing to get everyone into the spirit of the night.

Consider a snowman contest. Place a gift bag of “snowman supplies” at each table. The “snow” can be a container of white modeling clay for kids. The snowman’s accessories can be fashioned from various other craft supplies you will include in the bag such as buttons, modeling clay in other colors, bits of fabric, etc. Choose an impartial judge and award a prize to all members of the winning table.

Set up a cookie decorating station to help everyone relax a bit and get creative. Just provide a table full of baked, snowman shaped sugar cookies along side a tray of decorating supplies such as frosting and colored candies and let guests have fun trying to outdo each other’s creations.

Extra Touches
You’ll likely pay close attention to the most important details such as the DJ and the decor, but don’t overlook the importance of the little extras. Why not use plastic snow globes with each guest’s name attached as place cards? Serve roasted chestnuts as an appetizer. Ask the caterer to include some warm drinks on the cocktail list. What about setting up a wintry background and hiring a photographer to give guests the chance to get a nice photo with their significant other in time for the holiday cards? Little extras like these will definitely add to the fun.

The company party doesn’t have to be a dreaded holiday commitment. With a clever theme, a well chosen DJ and a bit of creativity, this annual party can become the social event of the season.

Don Crass is a professional Houston disc jockey with over 10 years of experience and co-owner of RetroDJtoGo, LLC located in Houston, Texas.

Corporate Parties, Holiday Parties