TU/e has become quite international with circa one-third of non-Dutch employees. This growing diversity impacts all kinds of practices and symbolic aspects of community life, but not our kerstpakket ritual (yet). Most people are happy with their gift card to spend individually, but some may feel uncomfortable with the wine, due to religious, ethical, medical or personal reasons. This often results in the biggest trade-off or give-away of the year, so if you like wine and your colleagues don’t, be sure to be around.

This situation features a typical example of two opposites known in intercultural communication jargon as Universalism versus Particularism, or the rule versus the exception. TU/e, a secular state university, is universalistic, and it follows standardized procedures based on Dutch value patterns of equality and pragmatism - with wine as a small occasional luxury allowed for Christmas, and aimed at pleasing the vast majority of TU/e employees.

However, people with a more particularistic orientation, a worldview based on specific religious, ethical or social restrictions or preferences, may object to this gift. Visually, the two big bottles of wine make up for the whole box, singling out other products. Trading the wine for the gift card is not necessarily fair, because they don’t represent the same money value. Consequently, some employees give their wine away, but get no compensation.

Can this difference in the values involved be reconciled? Let me explain. On the one hand, we want to apply uniform Dutch practices (festive wine at Christmas), but on the other hand, we also need to recognize diversity and allow for some exceptions or own preferences based on religions or other orientations. Unity versus diversity.

Most of us will agree that for logistics and equality reasons, the contents must be similar for everyone. The gift card is likely to be accepted by most recipients. So can the wine be replaced by a product with the same values, but with a larger acceptance within our diverse TU/e-community?

Wine is meant for employees, but not for their kids, aha… so wine is not as general as it seems! So would a box of luxury chocolates meant for the whole family be of a similar value as the wine? This is certainly worth thinking about for the years to come.

By the way, if you do so, please offer all types of chocolate to facilitate trading it off among employees. Good interaction at the end of the year. One objection to chocolate, I hear you say: it’s fat, rather unhealthy and oh yes, possibly harvested by exploited workers. And oh dear, no, we’ve had enough of that stuff earlier at Sinterklaas. What a luxury problem we all have…      

P.S. This column is based on a conversation I had with an international PhD-student reflecting on this typically Dutch tradition and the issues involved with it in an international community. Many thanks for the inspiration!