Today is German Unity Day, Germany’s National Day. Half of my team live in Berlin, so I vaguely knew they wouldn’t be around… but I’d likely have forgotten if not for a lovely tradition of “Holiday Inbound” emails at Mozilla.

Mozilla is a broadly-distributed organization with employees in dozens of countries worldwide. Each of these countries have multiple days off to rest or celebrate. It’s tough to know across so many nations and religions and cultures exactly who will be unable to respond to emails on exactly which days.

So on the cusp of a holiday it is tradition in Mozilla to send a Holiday Inbound email to all Mozilla employees noting that the country you’re trying to reach can’t come to the phone right now, so please leave a message at the tone.

More than just being a bland notification some Mozillians take the opportunity to explain the history and current significance of the event being celebrated. I’ve taken a crack at explaining the peculiarly-Canadian holiday of Christmas (pronounced [kris-muhs]) in the past.

Sometimes you even get some wonderful piece of alternate history like :mhoye’s delightful, 50% factual exploration of the origins of Canadian Labour Day 2016.

I delight in getting these notifications from our remotees and offices worldwide. It really brings us closer together through understanding, while simultaneously highlighting just how different we all are.

Maybe I should pen a Holiday Inbound email about Holiday Inbound emails. It would detail the long and fraught history of the tradition in a narrative full of villains and heroes and misspellings and misunderstandings…

Or maybe I should just try to get some work done while my German colleagues are out.

:chutten