Photo: theblackceos.com

‘Tis the season to celebrate Christmas, and many of our other human values like joy, peace, gratitude and…. diversity? Nope… As busy a time as the holidays are, especially in the office, everyone is much too preoccupied by their own agendas, and fitting their own overcrowded lives into what I like to call the “Christmas box”. It’s this mix of traditional religious, personal, and societal beliefs and expectations that make everything, or everyone else not connected to these beliefs and expectations, basically… an outsider.

Whether you happen to celebrate Kwanzaa, Yom Kippur, or any other holiday (or lack thereof) at all, you’re expected to have the “holiday spirit” in the traditional sense of the word. Very few managers actually ask their employees if they actually celebrate Christmas, or how they celebrate it for that matter, because it’s just assumed that they fit in the traditional “Christmas box”. Corporate functions and other office events around the holidays are centered around the same tradition of celebrations and gift-giving. We exchange gifts, talk about Santa, and complain about our impossible shopping schedules, without realizing  at times that some of us do not subscribe to the same beliefs, lifestyles or traditions. Not to dampen anyone’s “holiday spirit”, as I myself do celebrate Christmas…Yet I have many sisters, friends and co-workers of various cultural backgrounds, with differing religious and personal beliefs, whose diversity outside of mine has made me reconsider my own, and learn to expand the meaning of it, especially at work. For example, my dear friend K. is Jewish, and starts her holiday celebration in September at Yom Kippur; for her, the “holiday spirit” means that she has pretend to subscribe to all the office cheer in order to fit in. My girl A. celebrates Kwanzaa every year(for those of you reading and wondering what Kwanzaa is, it’s a week-long celebration honoring African heritage in African-American culture observed from December 26 to January 1), and although she has been working in the same office for a few holidays now, her manager still doesn’t know  what the holidays mean to her…

What we have to realize, as corporate sisters, managers, or otherwise participants in the corporate world, is that any minority point of view, belief or tradition, in or outside of the office, is an opportunity to acknowledge and also celebrate diversity. And as people, minorities or otherwise, it is our responsibility, and also our privilege, to step outside of our own “Christmas boxes”, or any other box we’ve cozied ourselves in, and expand our horizons. Because after all, if we don’t train ourselves to see diversity (when it’s staring at us in the face day in and day out), we won’t be able to manage it, let alone succeed around it.

And really, if we really (I mean really) mean it when we say with such good cheer “Merry Christmas” or “Happy Holidays”, then we may want to consider how we are making this world, or our own cubicle corner for that matter, a better place. And that may just be a matter of helping someone else fit in, asking someone else how, if and what they are celebrating, and opening our corporate minds to allow new concepts, new people, and new ideas to fit in…Isn’t that what the holiday cheer is about?

Are you looking for ways to address diversity issues at work this holiday season?