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As we are a North American based company, we have offices in New York City, Austin, Toronto, Montreal and Monterrey to name a few! All of us celebrate the holidays in different ways across the continent. Diversity and equality are a large part of our culture here and are at the forefront of what we stand for. Each employee has their own traditions and we wanted to share how our differences come together to create one company that celebrates each other!

Take a look at a few of our employee stories highlighting their favorite holiday traditions and memories!

Name: Tatiana, Copywriter
Current location: Toronto, Canada
Favorite Christmas food: Oliviet (Russian Salad)
Oliviet is like potato salad on steroids! It also has meat (ham or chicken), pickles, cucumbers, eggs, canned peas and carrots and dill. All smothered in a creamy mayonnaise dressing.
Christmas Traditions/Story: Because I’m Russian as well as Canadian, I also celebrate Christmas during the first week of January using the Julian calendar. But the real party is New Year’s! That’s when you get together with your family and friends, have a table full of food and talk and party into the night. There will probably be singing too!

 

Name: Liam, Director of Revenue and Solutions Consulting Management
Current location: Monterrey, Mexico
Favorite Christmas food: My mum’s brandy-cured Christmas cake 
Christmas Traditions/Story: When I was a kid, we always used to go to Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve. Because we’d be up late on Christmas Eve, on Christmas Day my brothers and I would wake up late (7am) to open our gifts. For Christmas dinner we would visit my grandparents and we’d have turkey, stuffing, brussel sprouts and exchange gifts with my cousins. The tradition I miss most is pulling Christmas Crackers and wearing paper crowns.

In Monterrey my wife and I gather with her family and we eat barbecued goat, ham and turkey and every family member is responsible for a part of the meal. Compared to an English Christmas, it’s a much more energetic and loud occasion with the whole family singing and laughing, I love it. Children break a piñata with sweets and fruit in it whilst everyone else sings.  Also, before the festivities we split up into 2 groups, one group sings outside asking for a place to stay (as Joseph and Mary in the Christmas Story) and the other group sings from inside, responding to the first group. 

 

Name: Jaylene, Assistant Manager
Current location: Toronto, Canada
Favorite Christmas food: Terry’s Chocolate Orange
Christmas Traditions/Story: My family tends to be more spontaneous during the holidays and tradition isn’t very fixed, however, food is a constant. We cook and buy more food than we could ever eat. Lately, we have planned a gift giving event, which involves bringing a general gift, and ‘stealing’ it from another person, and repeating that for hours until we each have a gift that may or may not be what we want. Very strange, but fun!

 

Name: Denys, Lead Project Manager
Current location: Chihuahua, Mexico
Favorite Christmas food: Red Pozole
Christmas Traditions/Story: Every Christmas Eve my family gets together to make dinner (which includes a lot of different meals such as tamales, pozole, beef, and turkey). When we finish making all the food, we eat together and then each of us go back home to be ready for the night At night we go back to my grandmother’s house to spend the night drinking, eating (more, if possible) and opening presents.

 

Name: Dulce, Project Manager
Current location: Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico
Favorite Christmas food: Tamales
Christmas Traditions/Story:The day before Christmas Eve, my family has dinner where we always do tamales, The whole family (cousins, uncles, aunts, etc) gets together, we do dinner , usually it’s turkey. When we finish eating we dance and sing. At midnight we open the presents that every family member brought.

 

Name: Lloyd, Solutions Consulting Manager
Current location: Toronto, Canada
Favorite Christmas food: Turkey
Christmas Traditions/Story: I will be reinventing my Christmas tradition as this is the first Christmas I’ve had off for 15 years. I used to travel every year and would always try to hunt down the Christmas Eve Midnight Mass. I’m looking forward to spending Christmas with my family when this pandemic is over. It will have to involve a box of milk chocolate Pot of Gold.

 

 

Name: Simon, Lead Solutions Consulting Manager
Current location: Toronto, Canada
Favorite Christmas food: Uszka with Borscht
Christmas Traditions/Story: Every Christmas Eve we celebrate Polish Christmas, which involves reading a passage from the Bible related to that day, and we all gather as a family and celebrate together. It is a traditional dinner, so there is no meat allowed.

 

 

Name: Michaela, Business Development Manager Current location: Austin, Texas Favorite Christmas food: Swedish Meatballs Christmas Traditions/Story:: Although I’m in Texas where winter is not really winter at all, most people celebrate with a ham as the main course on Christmas day. People here also have Barbeque and decorate their outside houses with bright lights involving longhorns and Texas-y themed decorations. However, my dad is from Sweden and we have a full main course on Christmas Eve night, filled with traditional Swedish food and desserts, like chocolate Daim and Swedish meatballs. Christmas morning, we eat a traditional Swedish rice pudding and each takes turns opening their presents, and spend the rest of the day relaxing, using our new gifts, and watching Christmas movies.

 

Name: Melodie, Lead Graphic Designer
Current location: Montreal, Canada
Favorite Christmas food: Duck Foie Gras
Christmas Traditions/Story: Because I was born in Martinique every Christmas we listen to this Christmas Creole album: Naissez L’Amour Vous Y Convie. Now my family is in Biarritz, France. We are close to the ocean and some years it’s particularly hot during this time of the year (around 20°) so we go surfing. For dinner we have duck foie gras, duck breast, salmon, Christmas log, lots of cheese and wine. We celebrate on the 24th at night and we open gifts that night. The day after we celebrate with my cousins.

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Author

Michaela Jonsson