We have a new hire in the office and her job title is employee experience manager. According to her, our company needs to celebrate things more to improve engagement. That apparently means celebrating every national holiday that you can think of. We're not talking about Christmas and Cinco De Mayo but also obscure holidays that people just invented, like Chocolate Chip Day, Friendship Day, and the upcoming National Make a Gift Day.

National days may seem silly to some. In fact, most of them are if you were to ask me! However, they also bring people together to celebrate the small things in life, which is nice. But did you know there are over 2000 national holidays? Because I didn't know until our new employee experience manager added all 2000 to our company calendar. You wouldn't believe how crazy our calendars look right now! I wouldn't say everyone was partaking in every single holiday. Well, Chocolate Chip Day, Cake Day, and Pickle Day were a ton of fun (and delicious). But some of the holidays were... ridiculous. 

The one that's coming up is National Gift Day. If you're wondering when is Gift Day, it's December 3rd. This unofficial holiday encourages individuals to make a gift for their loved ones, friends, and coworkers, and our employee experience manager wanted everyone to partake.

The manager wanted to record us making gifts, sharing with the camera why we made them and who we made them for. I think it will be a cute experience for our team.. but there's just one problem. I have no idea what to make or how to even make anything. I can barely color! So, this won't be an easy experience for me.

After a few months of celebrating every national holiday, many people were overwhelmed and weren’t getting any work done. There was so much leftover chocolate for Chocolate Day - that everyone was practically drunk on chocolate for a day and refused to work! Eventually, we decided this wasn’t sustainable. As a company, we settled on 12. So one national holiday each month. I was so excited about this because I needed all 2000 national holidays to disappear from my calendar so I could focus on other things, like my actual work meetings. 

Out of the 12, we decided National Make a Gift Day was still on the National Day Calendar 2023. I tried not to roll my eyes. This is the one I regretted. Not because I didn't want to show my appreciation to my coworkers or anything (really, it's a great idea!) I just couldn't make something creative even if you asked me to! Out of all the international and national holidays...It just had to be that one. 

I knew now that we were only celebrating once a month, and there was way more emphasis on the days, which meant I needed to put in tons of effort to leave a good impression on my coworkers and managers.

When National Make a Gift Day rolled around, it was time to start celebrating. We also settled on the following work-appropriate games, ideas, and ways to celebrate virtually - so everyone could participate - but participation became optional. (Thank goodness!)

Here's a list of the National Make a Gift Day gifting ideas we decided on:

• Secret Santa - Make a gift for a coworker
• Share your heritage with international gift day
• Bake a gift
• Sew a gift
• Draw something for your coworker 
• Send a custom card to a team member

These were just a few ways to participate in world gift day. While they all seemed relatively simple, I was not convinced this would be easy - at least for me. The only idea that stood out was sending a card to a coworker. How hard could that be? Write a few words on the front and sign my name - done! I wouldn't need to bake, cook, draw, sew, or do anything creative. However, participation was optional... What if I didn't participate at all? Would anyone notice on National Make a Gift Day if I didn't?

I'm not going to lie - this all felt like a test. Even though participation was optional, I felt like I had to participate. So I started looking up and researching National Make a Gift Day corporate gifting ideas. I needed something simple and easy. I didn't know how to sew, cook, or draw - so my options were insanely limited. Why couldn't I give them a gift card and call it a day? I guess that defeats the purpose of National Present Day. But why did we need to go with this national day out of all the other ones?

That's when it hit me - what if I didn't make the gift? I could order a custom gift from our online company store setup with SwagMagic. The items were still customized with our logos. I was just not the one that was making them... call it a loophole! It was a perfect idea! I knew what I needed to do. Now, I just needed to decide who was getting the gift and when I needed to get it to them. 

I looked at the national days calendar the employee experience manager calendar created. Now that there are only 12 holidays, the corporate calendar is less hectic. However, I am sad that National Chocolate Chip Cookie Day didn't cut it. That was my favorite holiday. I was eating handfuls of chocolate chips at my desk all day. It was the perfect national holiday.

There were a few other national holidays that didn't make the cut. I ended up searching online when is Friendship Day and when is National Girlfriend Day just so I could add them to my personal calendar. If I forget National Girlfriend Day again - my girlfriend will never forgive me.

In the end, participation in all of the national holidays was still waning, so we ended up dropping the list down to 3 holidays which for the next few years turned out to be getting a mish-mash of items and past games from other national holidays from that first crazy year.

However, I did show up to work on National Gift Day with a gift for the employee experience manager. I ordered her a custom t-shirt from the SwagMagic company store. Even though I didn't make it, I knew she'd appreciate it. Besides, I can't imagine how long it took her to add all 2000 national holidays to our calendar, only to remove them - she deserved this gift in my eyes. That must have taken hours to do. 

On December 3rd, she hugged me and was so excited about her gift. The best part? She didn't even say anything to me about not making it myself. So, it turns out you don't need to make the gift yourself to leave a lasting impression on the people you work with.