Merry Christmas! This is how your Junglück team celebrates

December flies by in a flash and it's Christmas again. Time to relax and slow down. Time to be with the important people in your life. And that's exactly what we wish for you this year.

This year, the JUNGLÜCK team also got into a bit of a festive mood - despite the virtual Christmas season again. In coffee chats, meetings or in small groups in the office, we talked about family traditions and our own rituals and discovered many funny things in common, but also new ideas. Various Christmas anecdotes, cookie accidents and gift ideas later, the idea came up to share these beautiful stories with our community. Maybe you'll recognize one or two traditions, get a bit of inspiration to try something new or see this post as a little incentive to reminisce about your own memories.

Uta (Customer Care): “We don’t put tinsel on our tree anymore because of the environment. Loriot (if you still know him) has a wonderful sketch in which he says “there used to be more tinsel”. That has now become a popular saying for us when we light the tree on Christmas Eve.”

Anna (Online Marketing): “We also have something really funny. We still have Santa Claus come to us every year. After dinner, my sister and I have to go to her room and my mom secretly puts the presents under the tree and then rings a bell. Only then are we allowed back into the living room. We are 25 and 19, but we do it every year.”

Giulia (Influencer Marketing): “We divide our Christmas menu up among all family members in advance, so that everyone takes on cooking one dish. Then we all cook together, chat and drink wine.”

Kim (Customer Care): “In my family we have some funny traditions that have been practiced every year for as long as I can remember. A Wolfgang Petry Christmas Edition CD is always put on for the evening's musical accompaniment. After we have listened to it 15 times on repeat, it's time to hand out the presents. Just like with Anna, my brothers (27 and 13) and I have to go to our old childhood bedrooms. There we wait until a bell rings and my father loudly closes the front door and calls out "Bye Santa Claus, see you next year". The crowning glory is always the family photo with Santa hats (taken with a self-timer).

Michael (Product Management): “We always have white sausages for lunch on Christmas Eve… unfortunately not vegan (I stand in the corner and am ashamed). Christmas Eve is the only day of the year when my father gets really sentimental when he sees his family all gathered together. Sometimes a tear rolls down his cheek – a great act of emotion for a straight man of the old school.”

Elisabeth (Shop Management): “We always ring in the Christmas season by baking cookies. Since my father is a chef and likes to test new recipes, we make more and more varieties every year. So far we have baked 14 different varieties. On Christmas Eve, it is tradition to play Activity after dinner and unwrapping presents. And like Anna and Kim, we still ring the bell every year.”

Lotte (International): “My father loves Christmas and thinks about a delicious Christmas menu weeks (months) in advance. In the past, he would always print out the menu neatly for everyone and put it on the table as a small menu. Last year, he sent it to everyone as a document in the WhatsApp family group to save paper.”

Kim (Customer Care): “Another little anecdote: Because my birthday is on December 23rd, I used to be very sad that I never celebrated a “real” birthday, because everything was always already under the guise of the following day. Friends and family usually didn’t have time on that day and a real birthday feeling never arose. My parents noticed this and since then the house has only been decorated and the tree put up on December 24th. PS: Today I don’t take it so seriously anymore & we often decorate the tree several days before Christmas Eve. But in the past, that was a real disaster in my eyes.”

Hannah (CSR Management): “To make unwrapping presents a bit more exciting, we have been rolling dice for presents ever since I was little. Whoever rolls a 6 gets to unwrap. Last year it got out of hand and we expanded the whole thing to include games of skill: only those who had completed a certain task were allowed to unwrap a present. With a few glasses of wine inside us, the whole thing was even more fun.”

Lena (Content Management): “In my family, Christmas Eve has been exactly the same for ages: We have cream of potato soup with various toppings and salmon, aioli and baguette (for once I'm not as vegetarian as usual that evening). It's actually a pretty unfestive meal... But when the four of us sit down in the living room next to the fireplace and the decorated Christmas tree and start eating, it's just so special every year. We also have a lovely tradition for presents. So that we can enjoy giving and receiving presents together - and so that not everyone is busy with themselves and their pile - we raffle off the Christmas presents every year. That means each present has a number and we take turns drawing the lots from a pot. Whoever draws the number has to go and look for the present under the tree (there's a bit of Easter involved too). Whoever wrapped it can then say who it's for. So we all watch it being unwrapped and enjoy it together. Some funny situations have arisen... Some years I get an old Pritt stick as a gift. A running joke in my family: When I was very small and first noticed that someone in my family gets presents on different days of the year, I really wanted to join in and packed up a dried-up Pritt glue stick from my desk and gave it to my dad. I obviously hadn't fully grasped the concept of giving gifts, but the gesture counts and still makes for a good laugh today. Perhaps the best gift of all."

Lisa (CR Management): “For several years now, it has been a tradition for us to spend Christmas Eve in our own four walls and only get together in a larger group on Christmas Day. Such get-togethers have become rare now, as some of us have moved away from home. Therefore, there are no major items on the agenda other than eating a lot, handing out presents, chatting extensively and enjoying the time together.”

July (brand and communication design): “Our living room and kitchen are open and since we can never close a door, my dad always “covered” the living room with a sheet on the 24th so that my sister and I (now both in our late 20s) couldn’t see the presents. The year before last there was no sheet hanging in the morning and we saw the presents under the tree… you can imagine, there was drama… Last year the curtain was hanging again. Otherwise we always eat soup with fritters. That’s a tradition for us and in the evening just before the presents are given out the bell rings. BUT everyone sits at the table… how can that be?? When we were little my dad used to record the bell ringing (he basically waited 10 minutes and then he recorded the ringing) so we always thought it was Santa Claus. Well, the tradition continues to this day. Then we always play games, drink wine, sing and play the guitar in front of the decorated tree and then we start unwrapping the presents. It's always very touching and exciting to see how the person reacts. Giving someone something that they are really happy about is one of the most beautiful things you can do."

Finja (Business Development): At Christmas we always make our own ravioli with chestnut filling, among other things, super delicious! And vegetarian, because my sister and I don't eat meat. We also always give our parents a board game, which we can then play on Christmas Eve and over the holidays:grin: And on the 1st or 2nd holiday (without Corona) there is always a huge family reunion, because my dad has 16 siblings.

Time for mindfulness

This year, our Christmas motto was "Mindful Giving". A very nice and multifaceted message, because it's not just about making conscious and sustainable decisions when buying gifts, but also about using the gift to express that you have thought about the person's wishes and are just as mindful of yourself. 2021 has been an up and down and back and forth for all of us. Christmas is the time we are given every year to be with our loved ones, to switch off, to eat too much, to reminisce, to laugh until our stomachs hurt, to be close to each other, to reflect, to be mindful.

We hope that you take this mindfulness with you into 2022. Do what you feel like doing, listen to your gut feeling, take your time, treat yourself to self-love, be with yourself and those who are important to you. Just be yourself.

The entire JUNGLÜCK team wishes you a Merry Christmas!