The First of Two Christmases
Not many kilometers west of Vega's Novi Sad office is an invisible line that wraps around the globe, essentially, from the lowest valley to the top of the sky, if you're inclined to believe that there is a ceiling to the Heavens. This line is the border between Western and Orthodox Christianity, which might not seem that important in today's secular and computerized world, where religious and ethnic affiliations are mostly dismissed, but it does recommend what day you celebrate Christmas, and every now and again, something comes up because of it.
So stated, we believe that whatever Christmas you celebrate, that whatever side of the line you fall on, or follow, whatever emperor or head priest's calendar you prefer, Christmas should be celebrated on the day you want it be: so we decided to honor the 25th of December for those that celebrate it like that, and make Christmas cards.
We were under deadline…we're always under deadline…because we started the wholelet's send cardsplan a day or two later than we should have, for technical reasons that are still being table-talked.
Anyway, we approached our frontline creative consultant, Danilo Novakovic, with the plan. He accepted the assignment without hesitation, of course, because be it a Christmas card or a new page design, when the job has to be done, it has to be done.
So he came up with a spectacular idea, incorporating the Vega logo with Santa Claus, well wishes in English, Dutch, and Serbian, and sent it to the printer, who promptly told Danilo that the job couldn't be done by the next morning, which Danilo had requested the order be finished by.
Okay, says Danilo,what we'll have to do now is make them ourselves,because there was no backing out, and like The Pony Express said,the mail must get through.
And because most hands on board were busy coding or building otherwise, he turned to the girls in office operations, Isidora and her assistant Lidija, and what started as an act of emergency handicrafting evolved into a daylong project of hand cutting and assembling every card individually.
Firstly, Vega isn't set up like a community recreation room or preschool. There was a lack of colored paper and scissors, tape and glue, the required staples of cardmakers everywhere.
While Isidora and Lidija were off shopping, Danilo was hatching mad plans to make each card unique from every other by crinkling up each piece of paper with the well wishing and Christmastimed logo, then ironing it out, flat and white, to add something from the heart, the proof that, along with the printed assurance that each card was "designed and hand made by Vega IT Sourcing," it even looked hand made. And of course, each one had to be great, because it's Vega, and everything had to appear as if the Seraphim themselves had cut the circles that framed the Star of Vega on the cover of every card.
Danilo was proud to have pulled off the job. Isidora stated that they had worked at a suicidal pace for over eight hours, and everyone's after work plans were scrapped. There was pizza, people bringing ironing boards from home, because it's not like Vega has five clients west of the divining line, and tremendous ironing was required. Colleague after colleague passed the trio on their way out of the office asking if they could help.
"If you have scissors," Isidora told them, "you can help."
So as many people as they could shanghai came in scissoring.
In the end, after the cards were stacked, and cut down to fit into the CD covers that made for perfect envelopes, the fun moments weighed against all the hair pulling, it can be said that a fine time was had by all.
And we're bringing the story to you just in time for the end of holidays.
So Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. Prettige Kerstdagen en een Gelukkig Nieuwjaar. Zelimo Vam Srecne Novogodisnje i Bozicne praznike.
