Create your Holiday communications plan today

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.

Finding New Ways to Celebrate the Holidays While We're Physically Apart The holiday season is indeed upon us. We're now three days into Hanukkah, and Christmas is only 12 days away. As we adjust our holiday routines because of the pandemic, we've already begun to see new trends take hold. Black Friday shopping was expanded to essentially all of November. Fearing shipping delays, many online shoppers have pushed up their gifting schedules. Us included. With all the positive feedback, it might just be something we do every year. Most years, gifts we send get lost in the holiday gift shuffle. Sending gifts early allows our gifts to stand out a bit. We have been enjoying hearing from our friends and coworkers about how they are putting their gifts to use. We have sent many Revolution Cooking Smart Toasters and we love hearing about how toast has never been the same since using the toaster! We also understand that with traditional gatherings off the table for many families, they're looking for new ways to celebrate together while physically apart. Ideas for celebrating at a distance We love hearing from you about how you'll be making the most of the holidays, whether through long-held traditions or new ones you're adopting. Some families tell us they're hanging photos of missed loved ones as Christmas tree ornaments. Others are sharing Hanukkah meals over Zoom. Grandparents are using the same technology to read bedtime stories. Some families are even using the money from canceled trips to make charitable contributions in honor of loved ones. People are also mailing cookies and candy or buying a book and chocolates for each family member as a setup for a cozy Christmas Eve. Jim and his family are pivoting their typical plans to develop Santa's Smores-A-Thon, inviting his family for physically distanced smores-making around a fire pit. This was an idea from our friend, Debra Morris at Eventsful. More to come on how these plans develop: ) All these ideas prove that distance doesn't mean we have to celebrate alone. We hope others will share their ideas as well through this link. Planning ahead for holiday communications Since the hustle and bustle of merrymaking is diminished from previous years, making time for reflection and appreciation of the people in your life is very important. Nurturing relationships will help lift your spirits and may be invaluable to those who'll spend the holiday more isolated than they have in the past. We've begun our own process of reaching out to friends and family. We call it our holiday communications plan. Instead of dropping by a friend's home or meeting at a coffee shop or in an office hallway, we've started intentionally reaching out to schedule virtual get-togethers with friends and loved ones as a way to mimic those much-missed interactions. Making this list is a different approach to the holidays, but it may stick with us as a new tradition. It's very comforting and rewarding to list everyone who matters to you and then come up with ways to express how grateful you are that they're in your life. Try it for yourself and let us know the creative ways you come up with to connect with those special people. Expressing affection and gratitude Our holiday sales reports show that many of you are already sending holiday gifts. We're humbled by the thoughtfulness of our community and that you're seeking our help to express and connect to the important people in your life. We're seeing a significant increase in the number of gifts purchased now compared to this time last year, including by many first-time gift buyers. Sending a present, picking up the phone, or sharing a text or holiday card will let someone know you are thinking about them — and make their holiday merry and brighter, as well as yours. Wishing you a happy and healthy holiday season, Jim and Chris P.S. Recently Jim joined a Worth Media panel with some folks we are lucky enough to know well and work with – including Oliver Chen, Managing Director and senior equity research analyst at Cowen; Kathleen Entwistle, Private Wealth Advisor, Morgan Stanley Private Wealth Management; and Adam Hanft , our Board Member and Founder and CEO of Hanft Projects –to discuss gift-giving, consumer spending trends, and how you can make the most of giving this year. P.P.S. We had a conversation with Worth Media about the impact of COVID on our children. We had some wonderful experts including Dr. Daniel Willingham, a Professor of Psychology at the University of Virginia; Dr. Chloe Carmichael and Caryl Stern, the former President and CEO of UNICEF. If you missed it, you can check it out here. Related Articles That Caught Our Eye 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. Gift Cards | Security & Privacy Manage Email Preferences | Terms of Offer | Unsubscribe View as webpage This email was sent to webmonster2.sq90rar@blogger.com on 12/13/2020 © 2020 1-800-FLOWERS.COM, INC. • One Old Country Road, Suite 500 • Carle Place, New York 11514-1801