Today our team decorated our office for the holidays.

We have a shared work space. It’s more of an open area with a bunch of cubicles that open towards each other. Honestly, it would be an awkward fit if not for the team that inhabits this space. There’s no other way to say it – we just click and that makes it work.

Last week we sent out a meeting invite telling the 8 of us to reserve time on Monday morning to decorate the office. The idea was that all of us would “grab what we could” from home or wherever and then use it to decorate the office.

I went to HEB and bought wrapping paper, some multi-color Christmas lights and some gift wrap bows. Others in the office brought tinsel, garland, even MORE lights, a Christmas penguin, a purple mini Christmas tree with battery powered lights (safety is first last and always), hot chocolate, marshmallows, candy canes and a bag of highly addictive white powdered doughnuts!

Someone grabbed their iPhone, fired up the Christmas station on Pandora, and we got to work. Well, technically it wasn’t work but those are mere details.

We didn’t have a specific plan. We just sort of threw what we had on the wall. Our decorations don’t match. We didn’t take time to take pictures or post anything to social media. We focused on ourselves and the moment and let me tell you, it was amazing.

Today ALSO just so happened to be the day another coworker delivered on the promise to have her cousin bring us some “genuine” red beans and rice for lunch. I know, this sounds unbelievable but all of this happened, I promise you. At lunch, we all partook in more than our fair share around our tiny conference table surrounded by fruit of our holiday decorating labor.

We ate. We drank (hot chocolate and coffee). We were merry.

And as the day wore on I think each of us had a growing sense of appreciation for what we accomplished. Extended moments like this are often the stuff of family gatherings . We pulled this off at the office, in between stressful meetings and amid a great big pile of work without missing a beat.

And that’s why today was a good day.

Image credit: By mattbuck (category) (Own work by mattbuck.) [CC-BY-SA-2.0], via Wikimedia Commons