As Mother’s Day approaches, we’re thinking a lot about the importance of moms in our lives. Many of us have mother figures who aren’t officially our moms. They might be a grandma, a neighbor, or even a co-worker. Some of us are even lucky to have many moms!
Regardless of the makeup of your family or your relationship to your moms, the common denominator across all types of motherhood is love.
Here’s something fun from Nicole DiGiose on our content editing team. She thought you might enjoy it.
Love Makes a Family
We launched Love Makes a Family to celebrate this love and share stories of motherhood in all its forms. Here are just a few examples of some extraordinary relationships:
We would love to hear your stories about the inspiring moms in your life: mothers, stepmoms or any mother figure who is important to you. Tell us about those wonderful women here.
The Kitchen Table, Where Families Often Gather
Some of the stories we’ve heard so far involve shared memories and moments. We all have memories of shared food and special occasions. In fact, for us, our grandmother’s kitchen table was the center of the family, our boardroom so to speak.
Many of us have kitchen tables, physical and virtual, that are at the heart of many family memories. A Harvard School of Education podcast reprises decades of research showing we’re all healthier and happier when we make time for such gatherings. We’d like to invite you to our own table.
Hosted live on Facebook each month, our morning show Breakfast at Wolferman’s Bakery offers a lively mix of cooking tips, personal stories, behind-the-scenes looks at the key ingredients in our products, and favorite recipes.
This month on April 27, our host Lucy Sommer, Wolferman’s Merchandising Manager, will be back with guests Dr. Chloe Carmichael and Liz Della Croce Dr. Chloe , a clinical psychologist, author of Nervous Energy: Harness the Power of Your Anxiety, and member of our Connectivity Council, will offer tips for managing stress as a parent and ideas for how to support the mothers you know Liz Della Croce, founder of The Lemon Bowl, a healthy food, travel, and lifestyle blog, will share an easy French toast recipe that even the kids can help out with — perfect for Mother’s Day!
It’s a fair bet that stories about families and children probably will come up, too. They generally do around kitchen tables.
Nothing is more important to our happiness and well-being than knowing that others care about us. Expressions of connection can come through companionship, words, and caring acts that show how we’re special to someone. Research has repeatedly demonstrated that connection is a gut-level need for all human beings. Further, it turns out that we’re actually designed to be kind. Scientists can prove that kindness is good for us, not only spiritually, but physiologically.
So, how can we all do ourselves some good?
The importance of shared ceremony
Ceremonies, celebrations and rituals — both in person and online – are great ways to maintain and grow connections.
In a difficult period, continuing with rituals and celebrations helps us maintain our emotional equilibrium and even find occasions for renewal and joy. Field experiments have shown that participating in group rituals can reduce levels of a stress hormone in the blood and lower a person’s heartbeat. Around the globe, ceremony and ritual mark the most important moments in life.
Especially birthdays
Some of the most important, most universally welcomed ceremonial occasions are birthdays. In fact, a Canadian research group has published a survey parsing the various ways in which almost everybody appreciates birthday celebrations.
The yearly ceremonies and little rituals that friends and families create to celebrate birthdays draw communities closer. That’s certainly the way Jim remembers it from his years as an administrator at St. John’s Residence for Boys, a residential program for at-risk adolescents. The staff had a few traditions for birthdays that started with employees simply gathering during the lunch break to eat together. The birthday boy or birthday girl would wear a tasseled cap held on with a chin strap and a wonderfully silly, plastic, orange pinky ring. Over time, these rituals evolved and grew. Pretty soon, the parties added a secondary honoree, the “keeper of the knife,” who had the most important role of cutting the birthday cake. People started bringing food for others to share, and the loosely organized lunches developed into potluck feasts.
At the group home, Jim also went out of his way to celebrate the residents’ birthdays. Although many of the boys acted as though they didn’t want the attention, even “tough guys” got their feelings hurt if their birthday was not celebrated. Jim celebrated by having the group gather, singing “Happy Birthday” and letting the person celebrating his birthday choose whatever he wanted for dinner. It was good old-fashioned fun!
Today, at 1-800-FLOWERS.COM, Jim and Chris recognize milestones of the team. Jim sends birthday emails while Chris sends notes marking work anniversaries. Sure, it’s time consuming with thousands of team members! But the response is worth the investment. The notes we get back express how good it makes our team feel and it begets some interesting dialogue that ordinarily would not have happened.
In our family, Jim is the one who reminds everyone whose birthday it is. That is because his assistant Patty keeps him organized. One year, the keeper of the birthdays (Jim) forgot his youngest son Matt’s birthday and to this day it’s something for which he feels terrible.
Just remember, being recognized and acknowledged on our birthday feels good no matter your age! Who is on your birthday list? Remember a text, email and call can go a long way in making someone’s day.
Wider and wider circles of community
As humans, we are genetically predisposed to seek community and to care for one another. And we get to live that out in our immediate and extended families, and at 1-800-FLOWERS.COM We think of all of you as part of our community.
Something else that is close to our hearts is Smile Farms, a nonprofit we founded with our families to create meaningful work opportunities in agricultural settings for men and women who are developmentally disabled. Smile Farms is the signature philanthropic partner of 1-800-FLOWERS.COM We have been humbled to watch our company team members rally behind Smile Farms and its important mission.
As difficult as the last year has been for all of us and as obvious as it may seem to say it, people with disabilities have in many cases had a particularly challenging year. One of our Farmers from the Viscardi Center’s Smile Farms campus hasn’t left his home in a year.
During this particularly challenging time, we wanted to do something more to support this group:
Birthdays + Smile Farms = BIRTHYAY!
Supporting a good cause certainly screams YAY to us!
We recently launched the BIRTHYAY! gift collection. For each item purchased from our special BIRTHYAY! gift collection, we will donate 20% of the net proceeds* to support our signature philanthropic partner, Smile Farms.
Adults with developmental disabilities represent a substantial percentage of America’s population. They are an important part of our communities. At Smile Farms, our Farmers experience the satisfaction of mastering new skills, the fulfillment of contributing to their team and community, and the self-respect and pride of taking home a paycheck. All the best,
Chris and Jim
Written by our Founder and CEO, our Celebrations Pulse Sunday Letters aim to engage with our community. From sharing stories to welcoming your ideas, we want to help you to express, connect, and celebrate the important people in your life.
*“Net Proceeds” shall be defined as the gross sales price of the product less any and all taxes, service charges, shipping and handling charges, discounts, gift certificates, promotional gift certificates, promotional offers (e.g. airline miles, points, e-money, etc.) credits, rebates, chargebacks, refunds, credit card processing fees and gift certificate cancellations.
This time a year ago, when lockdowns began in March, we listened to the experts, and their forecasts stoked our primal fears and concerns. We worried if we or our loved ones would get sick and if we would have adequate medical care and food supplies.
At the same time, the Easter and Passover holidays were upon us and lots of us were trying to cope with the idea that we couldn’t safely hold in-person Passover Seders or Easter dinners. Some families had to accept that during the pandemic an Easter Egg hunt, ordinarily such a joyful event, might bring extended families too close together for safety.
In the intervening time, we’ve all adapted. We’ve learned a lot about finding new ways to connect with the people who mean the most to us through virtual gatherings on services such as Zoom, FaceTime, Skype and other group chat platforms. We’ve discovered new ways to celebrate the holidays, including resources for a virtual Passover Seder and online Easter games.
A reason for hope
And at last, there are the vaccines, offering for some the chance to see sorely missed friends and relatives, and for the rest of us, the hope of reunions in the near future.
Our friend, Board Member Larry Zarin, has described this past year as a “forcing function.” In other words, by disrupting our normal rhythms, the pandemic has forced many of us to examine our lives more closely and to think more deeply about the people and experiences that matter most and how we spend our time and resources.
We have been thinking about how much in the past year has been different from what we may have come to expect earlier in their lives. This year, as we gather around the table, we will take time to reflect and reminisce about friends or family members who couldn’t join us. We will be sure to record some of those memories and send them to our loved ones, and the meal also will include FaceTime calls to people who can’t come to dinner in person.
New opportunities and good fortune
Easter celebrates new beginnings. Passover recalls the suffering of ancestors, honors the journey to freedom, and gives thanks for the great good fortune of those who survived to keep the faith alive. For Jews and Christians alike, the respective holidays offer the opportunity for a mixture of reflection and celebration. Let’s think of these times as a forcing function that asks us to renew our faith, our relationships, and our commitment to the values we hold dear.
We’d love to hear about how you’ll be celebrating this year, whether it’s an online gathering or a post-vaccination reunion, or a combination of the two. How have the preparations for the holiday been different this year than last, and what are your hopes for next year? It would be great to share tips on what works best for a virtual celebration, such as how to keep things flowing naturally in a Zoom call, and for those of you who are lucky enough to be reunited with loved ones, what you learned about your relationships in the last year. Please let us know here, and get a chance to ponder your own experience in light of what others have to say.
Activities to help you celebrate and connect
Especially for children, being separated from loved ones for yet another holiday might be difficult.
We spoke to friend, Dr. Dan Willingham, a psychology professor and researcher on the cognitive psychology of children, about some things to consider to help our children and grandchildren continue to have positive associations with holidays, particularly the upcoming Easter and Passover occasions. He suggested that with Seders or Easter dinners that must be held via FaceTime or Zoom, children might feel more connection to the occasion if people at each location are doing the same surprise thing at the same time. That would mean adults would have to plan and coordinate. Maybe it would mean the kids at the distant locations getting identical or very similar small gifts. Maybe for the Seder, it would mean each searching for the afikomen at the same time. For Easter, it might be a simultaneous Easter Egg hunt, or decorating the eggs together on camera. The idea is to create a shared experience and memory, and to say by doing that that we really are all together in spirit.
By the way, we’ve included Dr. Willingham in our Connectivity Council, a group of trusted advisors and friends, Here’s a little more about the group.
To that end, here are some tools we put together that we hope you will find useful such as printable Easter coloring pages and cards. To help out with the celebrations for those of you who can’t meet in person, we have some downloadable ecards and holiday-themed Zoom backgrounds. And finally, we’ve thought about how complex running an online gathering can be. So we’ve written up a guide on preparing for the festivities in advance.
If we must still be apart this year, let’s use our tech skills to make the most of these holidays yet again. For those fortunate enough to be able to gather in person, let’s remember that there’s still a lot that science doesn’t know, and some precautions are still in order.
Let’s all of us realize again this year how fortunate we are, and how glad we are to have one another. All the best,
Chris & Jim
Written by our Founder and CEO, our Celebrations Pulse Sunday Letters aim to engage with our community. From sharing stories to welcoming your ideas, we want to help you to express, connect, and celebrate the important people in your life.
It’s now been 12 months since we’ve hugged anyone outside our immediate families, gone to the movies, or traveled without fear. It’s been months and months of wearing masks, bumping elbows instead of shaking hands, and sanitizing our surroundings. One year ago, the pandemic changed life as we knew it.
Coping Together
At the start of the pandemic, we launched the Celebrations Pulse, this letter, as a means of checking in with our community. We wanted to tell you how we were coping, in the hope that it might help some of you navigate this difficult time. For the last 12 months, we’ve shared ideas for celebrating the holidays safely, tips on organizing your virtual life, and lessons for making the most of new online tools to stay connected with friends and family.
Over the last year, we have been moved by your feedback and wanted to share a few of the posts we received.
Introducing Breakfast at Wolferman’s Bakery
We’ve thought a lot about how we can expand the use of online meeting places and other venues to foster the sense of community that so many of us have missed so much this year.
Hosted on Facebook Live each month, Breakfast at Wolferman’s Bakery will offer a mix of helpful tips, personal stories, and of course, the secrets behind our guests’ most delicious recipes. Not only will our guests teach our community how to make these dishes, but also how to pair them with just the right sides, and, for moments of celebration, some bubbles.
The premiere episode of Breakfast at Wolferman’s Bakery will explore Wolferman’s history, including its origins as a corner grocery store in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1888 — and the recipe for Super-Thick English Muffins that put it on the map. Steve Lightman, our company’s group president of Gourmet Foods and Gift Baskets, and host Lucy Sommer, Wolferman’s merchandising manager, will open the show. They will be joined by guests Toby Dixon, manager of Wolferman’s Bakery Product Development, and CeCe Olisa, who is a blogger and entrepreneur. Toby will show us how to make Eggs Benedict with her own delicious innovations, and CeCe will lead an open discussion on how to start the day off right with a morning routine. Our guests will share a little bit about their favorite breakfast traditions, too!
Future episodes will include discussions on motherhood, family, and fresh starts, as well as cooking lessons, with clinical psychologist Chloe Carmichael, chef Pati Jinich, and philanthropist and floral expert Julie McCann-Mulligan.
We hope you’ll let us be a part of your morning routine once a month, and join us for interesting conversations, tasty new treats, and ideas about the transition to a post-pandemic world. Tune in for 30 minutes (because who has time for an hour-long breakfast!?) beginning March 23 at 11AM EDT. RSVP NOW
All the best,
Chris & Jim
Written by our Founder and CEO, our Celebrations Pulse Sunday Letters aim to engage with our community. From sharing stories to welcoming your ideas, we want to help you to express, connect, and celebrate the important people in your life.
If the past year has brought anything into focus, it’s the vital importance of community. Many of us have spent months cooped up in front of our screens, often separated from friends and family. We’ve engaged with fewer people each day and lost the spontaneous conversations we used to have at the office or our local coffee shop.
However, as humans, we try to be resilient and cope. One way that we cope is through building and maintaining relationships. This year, for instance, we’ve made some “COVID buddies,” to borrow language from one of them, Dr. George Everly.
As COVID reached our shores last March, we began a dialogue with our community in the form of this weekly Celebrations Pulse letter. Larry Zarin, our friend and member of our board of directors, encouraged us to gather experts to provide guidance on how best we can help our community express, connect and continue to form and maintain relationships during these times.
We took Larry’s advice and connected with leading experts who agreed to share their research and insights with our community. You’ll likely recognize many of their names from our previous Celebrations Pulse letters as we’ve tapped their knowledge on an individual basis. Today, we are excited to unveil the full council to our community and share with you these wonderful minds in the area of wellness, mental health and relationships.
Meet the Connectivity Council
“Connection is the single best predictor of human resilience. In my travels to 39 countries on six continents I have personally witnessed its power to inspire and to heal. I am honored indeed to be part of the ‘Connectivity Council’ and look forward to not only reinforcing the power of human connection, but also exploring new ways to strengthen that connection. Let’s never forget, no one is ever really alone, we are all part of the whole. From that understanding there is nothing we cannot do … together.”
Dr. Goerge Everly A Professor in the Department of International Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and holds honorary professorships in Argentina and Peru. He is the author of over 20 books on stress,disaster, and human resilience.
“Hi everyone! I’m so excited to be part of this community. I trained as a memory researcher, and spent the first part of my career doing pretty technical research on the brain basis of learning. For the last twenty years , all of my work has focused on translating what scientists know about the mind and brain to practical ways we can help children learn, grow, and flourish. I’m really looking forward to learning from you all!”
Dr. Dan Willingham A professor of psychology at theUniversity of Virginia, and a researcheron the cognitive psychology of children.
“I am very excited to join your community.I love helping people to harness their strengths and create positivity in their lives!”
Dr. Chloe Carmichael A clinical psychologist, author, and speaker. Her new book, Nervous Energy: Harness the Power of Your Anxiety, offers practical tools to manage stress, improve relationships, and increase emotional fulfillment.
I am sure some of you are thinking, “Why would a flower and gift company develop a Connectivity Council?” Well, we don’t think of you as customers but rather as part of our community. That’s why we host events like our Harry & David Hosted Dinners, floral arranging classes and charcuterie classes with a Cheryl’s book club soon to come. It’s also why we developed Connection communities, digital communities which we are evolving to develop forums around community topics – like COVID’s impact on children and the special circumstances of caregivers. Feedback on these activities and this weekly letter has been amazing.
For us, everything is better when it’s shared. Whether that’s an article, food, or the wonderful people we’ve met through our Connectivity Council.
All the best, Chris and Jim
Written by our Founder and CEO, our Celebrations Pulse Sunday Letters aim to engage with our community. From sharing stories to welcoming your ideas, we want to help you to express, connect, and celebrate the important people in your life.
One of the things in life that we don’t talk about much is death, specifically the grief that comes with it. However, the pandemic has fundamentally changed the way we experience loss and grief, pushing the subject to the front and center for many of us.
In the past, when someone close to us passed away, we typically had a set of rites and rituals that would guide us through the process. Friends and family gathered to pay their respects at a church, funeral home, or cemetery, before meeting once again afterward to celebrate the life of the departed. Some of those traditions were already slowly changing before the pandemic, with increases in cremations and long-distance services. But in the past year, the changes have transformed how we grieve and mourn.
Some people have conducted small, very tight memorial services — if they have any at all. Even if a service can be held in-person, there is tremendous precaution and planning that goes into choosing who can attend and where the service can take place. This change is reflected in how our customers comfort those who are grieving: flowers and other gifts that express sympathy are increasingly being sent to homes rather than funeral homes and churches.
We recently attended our first in-person funeral in months, and it made us think about how unimaginably tough this year has been on the families who have suffered loss. The usual rituals that help us say goodbye, grieve, and engage with our communities are greatly impacted. Much of the emotional and social support people need is no longer there.
Sympathy expression has always been important to us
A few years ago, we asked ourselves the question: What can we do to help our customers express themselves around the rites and rituals of death and dying? We had heard so many questions come up while speaking with our community and team members — how do you properly express yourself? How do you find the words?
Our customers engaged in a dialogue with us that provided the information we needed to begin. We had numerous discussions about grief and condolence, and it became clear there is a need to talk about these issues. Our first step was to reach out to our friend John Tesh, a media personality and world-renowned musician who regularly discusses difficult personal topics on his “Intelligence for Your Life” radio show. John says death and loss have been among the most engaged topics he’s had with his audience. A few years later, we continue to work together to help our joint communities.
We also developed a relationship with Rebecca Soffer, co-founder of the inspirational content site Modern Loss. Rebecca lost both her parents at a relatively early age. She has led discussions and authored several pieces on our website on the issues of grief and loss. Both John and Rebecca have worked with us to help the 1-800-Flowers.com community to have a conversation around understanding how mourning is conducted in other countries, helping with what to say to coworkers experiencing loss and navigate the complicated process of funerals.
A deeper understanding of sympathy
In light of the changes due to the pandemic, we are embarking on a series of deep dives into different aspects of sympathy and how it is changing. We have developed an online community focused on those grieving either to help someone going through mourning or to find others who are also going through loss. We hope you will join the conversation here if this is something that resonates with you. Jim has also written a piece in Worth magazine on the topic here.
You can also find a collection of resources on sympathy & remembrance here.
We hope you find this useful and we welcome your comments, thoughts and suggestions. You can email us here: sympathy@1800flowers.com
Chris & Jim
Written by our Founder and CEO, our Celebrations Pulse Sunday Letters aim to engage with our community. From sharing stories to welcoming your ideas, we want to help you to express, connect, and celebrate the important people in your life.
As you can imagine, we think a lot about floral trends as we approach Valentine’s Day. As florists, we often get asked about our top picks and why we like them.
Favorite flowers often bring back memories, evoke emotions, or remind us of the joys of life. We thought we’d share our top picks – and asked some friends and community members to join us.
What peonies mean to Jim
“I love peonies. We grew up in Queens, and there were very few bushes in our neighborhood. But we did have a peonies bush! It was so beautiful in the spring, when the flowers were in full bloom. They made our otherwise dreary yard pop with color. These flowers added a little magic to our neighborhood—and our lives.”
“Carnations are beautiful flowers with a great vase life and wonderful scent. They’ve been overlooked for the past several years but are making a comeback. I like that it’s something of an underdog. In fact, in a Sex and The City episode, Charlotte said she knew her date was not a fit because he brought her carnations! The same goes for gladiolas – an absolutely beautiful flower that’s fallen out of favor because of its strong ties to funerals.”
“I love Himalayan blue poppies. They’re native to high elevations in the Himalayas but can be grown in other environments. I also love roses. Lately, I’ve been working with them to create our Floral Hearts and have developed such a huge love for their diversity of colors and sturdiness.”
“I grew up in Garden City, N.Y. I love sunflowers. They remind me of camping out in my backyard. They were the first thing I saw when I stepped out of the tent.”
“My favorite flower is the orchid. They are truly beautiful and graceful. I can relate to how they need to take occasional retreats to rest and relax, and then emerge stronger than ever!”
“Hydrangeas are my favorite. They make flower arrangements look so very nice and elegant while also keeping them affordable. They’re perfect for people who want something that’s extremely stylish and full of color while still being economical.”
“Hydrangeas, without a doubt, will always be my favorite flower. They are a symbol of the summer season on Nantucket, a place that is very near and dear to me and holds so many special family memories. Plus, if you have taken one of our virtual workshops, you have probably heard me say that hydrangeas give you the most bang for your buck.”
Written by our Founder and CEO, our Celebrations Pulse Sunday Letters aim to engage with our community. From sharing stories to welcoming your ideas, we want to help you to express, connect, and celebrate the important people in your life.
The start of a new year is a great time to take stock of your relationships. In fact, making an effort to stay connected is a great new year’s resolution that can pay dividends for everyone involved. It’s one resolution that you won’t want to break.
But how do you get started?
Last week we shared that relationships matter to us so much that we built a business to help you connect to the important people in your lives. We have some ideas for staying connected– and have started using them ourselves.
Many of us are familiar with calendaring for appointments and work commitments. So why not do the same for relationships? Try creating a January Connectivity Calendar – a day-by-day list of people with whom you want to connect and reconnect during the month of January.
We don’t want to be accused of turning everything into a to-do list (but … guilty😊), however we thought it would be helpful to make a written plan to connect with all the people with whom you have been meaning to talk to but have not found the time.
Using our plan, we recently have had some wonderful conversations with friends old and new. There is one investor we have gotten to know well and we connect with him for advice and his sage council. Last week we told you about a couple of new friends we have made in 2020, CeCe Olisa and Dr. George Everly and we are looking forward to continuing to develop those relationships.
Use tech to fill in communication gaps
We all have people that we see based on time of year or when schedules align and we understand that we will have gaps in seeing each other but aim to pick back up where we left off when we can be physically together.
One tactic to fill that gap of time is to use the connectivity calendar as the foundation of text message or email groups. We have several active texts chains with friends and family in which we share quotes, jokes, GIFs and memes. It’s amazing how any one of those things can be more powerful than words alone. We also use text chains to stay connected with our business relationships. Text chains are a powerful connectivity tool for us that we are using as part of our January connectivity calendar, and it turns out we are not alone.
As you develop your own text and email chains, think about how you can be more inclusive and add someone who might be interested in the dialogue you are having. What niece, nephew aunt or colleague would add valuable thoughts to the conversation?
Another benefit of staying connected is the possibility of building new connections. A case in point is the friendship we developed last year with Dr. Chloe Carmichael, a clinical psychologist. We were introduced to her by another friend, Kevin Greaney, who thought it would make good sense for us to get to know one another. In fact, the conversation we had with Dr. Chloe about COVID’s impact on children was so meaningful we turned it into a digital roundtable.
We would love to hear how you have reached out to others, especially during the pandemic. Though a traditional phone call or text will always do the trick, there are so many creative ways to express and connect with others during this time. How will you be connecting?
All the best,
Chris & Jim
Written by our Founder and CEO, our Celebrations Pulse Sunday Letters aim to engage with our community. From sharing stories to welcoming your ideas, we want to help you to express, connect, and celebrate the important people in your life.
Christmas is just days away, and we hope you’re making lists for your celebration and checking them twice. Though pandemic restrictions have thrown many plans into disarray, there’s still time to consider alternatives for your regular holiday traditions.
One approach is to build on your Thanksgiving successes. Jim’s idea for backyard Papa’s Turkey Tacos proved to be a big hit. Because a large, indoor family meal together wasn’t possible, he and his wife set up an outdoor taco stand for his children and grandchildren, who embraced the opportunity to visit safely. His 5-year-old granddaughter told him it was the best Thanksgiving ever, so this might become a new tradition that will outlast the pandemic!
Now, Jim’s taking it up a notch for his physically distanced family Christmas gathering. He’s planning a Santa’s S’mores-A-Thon around his backyard firepit and adding a make-your-own hot chocolate stand for his guests to enjoy.
This is just one idea you can try if you want to see friends and family safely. But, please, check first to see if you need a permit and if conditions are safe for an open flame. You can also consider other innovations since we’re expanding the definition of tradition this year.
There’s still time to consider alternatives for your regular holiday traditions.
Your ideas for safe celebrations
We’ve enjoyed reading your stories about how you’re adapting your traditions to celebrate the holidays this year.
One community member, Daphne, told us that she and her husband have volunteered at a local food bank for the last three years. Although it will be tough this year, they hope to keep the tradition alive and offer whatever support they can. Daphne, what a wonderful way to give back during the holiday season!
Sarah wrote to us about how her Hanukkah traditions were a little different this year. Sarah typically gets together with her grandmother and loves her grandmother’s latkes. This year, since they cannot be together, her grandmother taught Sarah over Zoom how to make them herself. We hope they tasted just as good as you remembered, Sarah! Continuing with the theme of Zoom latke classes, our 1-800-FLOWERS.com team member Steve Roberts’ mother has long held her latke recipe a secret, but that meant that the family would miss her special dish this year since they couldn’t see her in person. Steve hosted a Zoom latke recipe reveal party for his mother to teach other family members how to make them. Instead of sitting at a matriarch’s elbow to learn how to make family dishes, this year has also shown us that you can hand down recipes and traditions generation to generation virtually in a pinch.
Another community member, Tom, said he’ll miss gathering with all his aunts, uncles, and cousins around the piano to sing holiday songs. Maybe he could take a page from the latke classes and try virtual caroling this year.
Exchanging treats with neighbors
You can connect virtually like Sarah and Steve, or you might have family and friends over for a safe, physically distanced outdoor gathering. You also can turn your celebration into a block party! Have neighbors set up tables at the end of their driveways with prepackaged treats to share and visit each table to collect holiday inspired goodies. Everyone will end up with a variety of delicious sweets and a connection with people you may not have been able to see for a while.
If you can bake and ship quickly enough, you may still have time to exchange sweets with friends and relatives who do not live in your area. You could have a Zoom Bake-A-Thon with friends and loved ones, then package and ship the cookies. This Washington Post article caught our eye with its tips and hints for recipes and shipping so the recipients don’t end up with a box of crumbs (which, just saying, they could sprinkle over ice cream or eggnog in the worst case).
Reading and snacking on gifts
One friend’s family has adopted the Icelandic tradition of Jólabókaflóð (pronounced yo-la-bok-a-flot), or Yule Book Flood. The custom of giving books and chocolates on Christmas Eve and then spending the evening enjoying both has been a holiday ritual dating back to World War II. If you must be physically distanced during the holidays, a good read and chocolates aren’t the worst ways to pass the time!
The Holidays and beyond
We also hope that as the holidays wrap up that you’ll start looking ahead to the new few months and make plans for getting through them. We will face more challenges, but we also will have a choice — and opportunity — to make the best of them. Maybe you want to start cooking or baking, learn a new language, or improve your personal relationships.
We would encourage you to start thinking about what you want to learn or accomplish in the new year. In the meantime, wishing you a safe and happy holiday season. All the best,
Jim and Chris
Written by our Founder and CEO, our Celebrations Pulse Sunday Letters aim to engage with our community. From sharing stories to welcoming your ideas, we want to help you to express, connect, and celebrate the important people in your life.
