It’s the Holiday Season - a wonderful time to celebrate the year, showcase your spirit and spend a little more time cherishing your fellow co-workers. At Ball Systems, we take the opportunity to enjoy all of that and a whole lot more.

Our holidays include a week packed with festivities. Christmas Week 2018 was five full days of holiday movie themes, scavenger hunts, seasonal treats and ridiculous fun to show-off our Yuletide cheer.  It’s a joyous time for us every year and no matter how silly it gets, it fits in well with the character of our company - because everything we do, we do as a team.

Day 1 – Polar Express

We kicked off the week with a theme around one of our favorite animated Christmas films and classic children’s books. The day included the first of four scavenger hunts for the week, a batch of hot chocolate in our office lobby and a company Pajama Day, which may have been particularly appreciated for Marketing employees who find it somewhat difficult to roll out of bed and wear something nice on a Monday morning.

(Pajama Day also featured Steve Kasparian, our sales manager pictured on the far left, in full Elf attire. Unfortunately for Steve, his proposal to make Elf onesies the new Ball Systems work uniform has been roundly rejected.)

Day 2 – The Grinch

Tuesday’s theme revolved around Dr. Seuss’ famous holiday misanthrope with Grinch pills (aka green and red M&Ms) in the lobby and a scavenger hunt to find The Grinch’s face and red hearts hidden around the office. Employees were encouraged to wear green and red or sport their craziest hairdos. 

Day 3 – It’s a Wonderful Life

Our third day of Christmas week was a step back in time to celebrate Frank Capra’s classic film and don Retro Day outfits (1980s or older). We had a variety of ensembles on display including a Jimmy Stewart lookalike costume, Letterman jacket and hippie apparel.

Day 4 – Elf

Thursday was inspired by Santa’s Little Helpers, which included a few employees in full costume, many others wearing crazy socks to celebrate and everyone left to wonder why Steve Kasparian didn’t save his Elf suit for the day that revolved around that very specific theme.

Day 5 – Christmas Vacation

The final day celebrated everyone’s favorite dysfunctional family comedy film with a packed day of events. To kick things off, employees put on their ugliest Christmas sweaters to wear around the office.

(Ugly Christmas Sweater day included Purdue Alumni Stacy and Pat Turley – pictured above - in Indiana University attire!

Note: This humble writer’s reminder to his boss that he had access to Photoshop and any ugly sweater qualifiers could easily be cropped out, thus making him look like an IU fan, was met with the threat of termination.)   

We followed the morning up with a pitch-in lunch and a White Elephant Gift Exchange, a delightful combination of dual activities that provided us all both the opportunity to share with our co-workers and steal from them.

Finally, Christmas Week 2018 culminated in a wonderful gathering at Christmas at the Zoo. Employees were able to see the remarkable light display, check out the zoo animals and even stick around for a dolphin show!

Every year, we make a point to create a special Christmas Week to celebrate the family feel of Ball Systems. It helps us not only get into the spirit of the season, but also reminds us how lucky we are to have each other and work for a company we love.

And we want to extend that cheer beyond our office as well. As we’ve done before, this year Ball Systems gave employees the option to participate in our Giving Tree program to help families and children supported by Student Impact of Westfield that are in need. Student Impact does a lot of great work in our community and they have helped us give back to the families and children in our area get the Christmas they deserve.

For us, it’s a great way to organize a list of gifts for our employees to shop for and make it easy for them to do something special for the holiday season. In total, we collected 30 gifts this year!  

From our family to yours, have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!