On Celebration - Holiday Participation Is An Identity Decision
Holidays are powerful cultural signals. They’re moments of shared meaning. Thus, they’re opportunities for brands to nurture connection by expressing identity and reinforcing values.
But most brands don’t fully leverage them. Not for lack of trying, but because they make one of these three common mistakes:
Treating holidays as content filler
Only celebrating what the founder celebrates
Celebrating everything
Why These Approaches Don’t Work
1. Holiday-as-content-filler
Marketers often use holidays to capture attention through trending hashtags or timely moments. And yes, attention has value, but not all attention is created equal.
When holidays become cheap tricks or performative gestures, people notice. When participation lacks sincerity, people notice.
And when a brand uses holidays to exploit rather than connect, it sends a clear signal.
In other words:
Cheap tricks get cheap outcomes.
Manipulation doesn’t earn loyalty.
And not all attention translates to new or returning business.
2. Founder-centric holidays
Allowing the founder’s cultural identity to blindly determine the brand’s celebratory traditions is one way default brands are born.
Two of the biggest risks? Confusion and exclusion.
Social posts or email blasts sent to acknowledge holidays with no clear relationship to the brand’s identity are noise at best and mixed messaging at worst.
And for brands building teams or monetizing community, founder-centric holiday choices create another problem: team members and segments of the audience may feel left out, or worse, overlooked.
3. Celebrating everything dilutes the main thing.
This third mistake is tricky because, at first glance, it can look like the same issue as using holidays as content filler or the supposed remedy to founder-only celebrations.
But it’s neither.
A brand can certainly treat holidays with sincerity and fill its content calendar with these sentiments.
Similarly, a brand can decide to solve the problem of blind exclusion through blind inclusion.
Both will fall flat because marketing to everyone attracts no one.
And participation without relevance doesn’t build connection; it erases identity.
A brand that acknowledges every holiday sends an unintentional message:
We don’t know who we are.
At that point, one could argue you’d be better off ignoring holidays altogether.
What To Do Instead
On Choosing
When choosing holidays intentionally, instead of asking, “Should we post about this holiday?” ask, “Does this holiday offer an opportunity to express our worldview and serve the humans in our orbit?”
Some brands will celebrate many holidays. Some will celebrate a few. Some won’t celebrate any.
All three are valid, as long as the choice is intentional and rooted in identity, not the founder’s traditions, not the algorithm, not guilt and fear of silence.
Then go on about the work of finding a way to make the holiday your own!
On Celebrating
Always celebrate in ways that reinforce identity.
At Humaniz, we use the Brand IdQ™ framework for all brand identity development. For the sake of simplicity, we’ll use the four Core Motives to show how one holiday can be celebrated in very different ways by different brands.
Holiday: A New Years
ORDER (Celebratory, Humanized)
Inward (team card / internal note)
Happy New Year. Thank you for the steadiness, care, and clarity you brought to this last year. Here’s to another year that feels grounded, organized, and may it be even kinder on all of us.
(Still Order, but warm. Celebrates the team, not the system.)
Market-facing (social post)
Happy New Year. We’re grateful for the trust you place in us. As we step into a new year, our focus remains the same: clear communication, thoughtful decisions, and work that makes your world easier to navigate.
(Still Order — structured, intentional — but holiday energy present.)
FREEDOM (Celebratory, Light, Expansive)
Inward (team card / internal note)
Happy New Year. Wishing each of you more breath, more ease, and more room to be yourselves this year.
(Ease, spaciousness, gratitude.)
Market-facing (social post)
Happy New Year. Here’s to lighter days, easier choices, and more room to grow — for you and thoose you hold dear.
(Celebratory but still identity-driven: ease, openness, relief.)
SOCIAL CONNECTION (Celebratory, Relational, Warm)
Inward (team card / internal note)
Happy New Year. Thank you for the kindness, generosity, and humanity you bring to this work. We wouldn’t be who we are without you. Here’s to another year of doing this together.
(Relational → closeness without being sentimental.)
Market-facing (social post)
Happy New Year. If you’re in our orbit, client, partner, friend, thank you. You make everything possible May this next year be our best yet!
(Not performative. Real gratitude. Still Social motive.)
EGO-EXPRESSION (Celebratory, Courageous, Purpose-Led)
Inward (team card / internal note)
Happy New Year. Thank you for bringing courage, creativity, and conviction into the work. Another year to build, influence, and shape what matters. Onward!
(Celebratory, not militant. Recognizes boldness in a human way.)
Market-facing (social post)
Happy New Year. Here’s to the ideas worth championing, the work worth doing, and the impact you hope to make. Go forth!
(Inspiration without grandstanding.)
Same holiday. Four completely different expressions. Identity intact.
If you want to take a closer look at your brand’s holiday behavior, what to acknowledge, what to skip, and how to express meaning with integrity, we can do that work together.
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"We don’t create brands, because we truly believe that every business already has a brand. Rather, our role is to help founders and their teams embody the brand fully, express it with more clarity, and expand its influence and impact with more confidence."
~ Charlie Birch, Author of On Raising Brands + Founder and Creative Director @ Humaniz Collective
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