If you’re a head chef or events organiser, a catering assistant or hotel manager, dreaming up new ways to keep your customers happy over Christmas is one of the more challenging – and rewarding – parts of the job.
Stuck for ideas for this festive season? Take inspiration from some of the more fun traditions from around the world.
Here are our favourites.
The Yule Lads
They may sound like a dodgy boy band but, known as jólasveinarnir in Iceland, these are actually 13 trolls who visit children in the 13 nights leading up to Christmas.
Each night children place their shoes by a window and a different Yule Lad leaves gifts for nice girls and boys – oh, and rotting potatoes for the naughty ones.
While we can’t encourage serving up bad spuds, you can treat younger diners to small festive gifts. Troll costumes are not compulsory.
Spice it up
If you thought Granny Ina’s homegrown sprouts were adventurous, spare a thought for Greenland’s Christmas diners. Their speciality is kiviak, a dish consisting of an auk which has been wrapped in a seal skin, buried for several months then eaten only when decomposed.
Why not spice up your menu with some similarly outlandish – if rather fresher – delicacies from around the planet?
The world-wide web
The hospitality business is growing more eco-friendly every year and there’s a tradition from the Ukraine that could motivate you to go green with your decorations.
Ukrainian Christmas trees are decorated with a fake spider and web in a move inspired by a tale about a woman who could not afford tinsel or baubles but woke up to find a spider had covered her tree in a glittering web.
If you have young guests, you could organise fun events such as painting pine cones gold or making garlands from shells.
Love is in the air
Czech women use a clever Christmas trick to predict how their love lives will fare in the New Year. Unmarried women stand with their backs to their front doors and throw shoes over their shoulders.
If a shoe lands with its toe pointing towards the door, the woman will get hitched within the next 12 months.
If you, too, want to get off on the right foot in 2018, you can get your toes pointing in the right direction with the latest vacancies in Hospitality, Catering and Tourism from s1jobs.