No, it’s not Christmas already – it’s Christmas STILL for some days. The red-hat-season was quite busy for me. When en event organiser is “in the mood”, then it’s a Christmas party all day long! One day in December I had two Christmas events to organise in different parts of Stockholm. And they both had ordered rental for Christmas decoration from me. It needed indeed detailed planning and some quick moves during the day, as you can guess. It was fun and everything went well, as all guests and hosts in both events were happy. At the starting time there were no signs of rushing, as everything settled well to their places as planned. In between everything I had a quick lunch at home; of course “elf porridge”, (tomtegröt). Elf porridge means rice porridge, which is the traditional energy source for all the elves of Santa Claus.
To energise your customers you need to energise yourself
During busy event days it’s extremely important for the event organiser to remember to eat as well. When you live and breathe the event you are making, you focus on every detail to be perfect. This is when you can easily forget to load yourself with energy. Adrenaline keeps you going. But when the moment comes when you would have a minute to sit down, you notice it. Whoops, I missed the lunch and the snack and the dinner… I have learned the lesson. In one project over ten years ago I even had a personal assistant just to make sure I ate. He made sure I sat down and ate properly twice a day. Then again I was “free to go” to continue my duties.
Have you seen a Finnish Christmas calendar TV programme “The Joulukalenteri”? They sing it’s so well about how it is to be an elf (tonttu): “Yeeeeah, it’s hard to be a tonttu.” Hard or not, anyways, I love it.
