Tis the season for … leftover pancakes?

My family celebrates Christmas. And like many other families, we have developed a few unique holiday traditions over the years.

Around 25 years ago, for instance, I did something with our family that I’ve repeated annually and that, as it turns out, also exemplifies one of my core beliefs about leadership: The value of having fun.

Honesty, humility, and heart, the 3H-Core that form part of my leadership philosophy, also work together to support another H – humor. Heart is all about valuing people as human beings, and that can involve some emotionally heavy matters at times. But when we approach people with honesty and humility, we don’t take ourselves too seriously and our natural humor can shine at appropriate times.

I believe people connect with leaders who laugh and create a fun environment. When we can do something to put a smile on someone’s face or cause them to chuckle a bit, that’s always a win. So while there are plenty of solemn moments during a Rakowich family Christmas, the annual opening of gag gifts isn’t one of them. It’s just an opportunity to share a bit of fun.

Once when Nicole and Matthew were still teenagers, for instance, they were having a hard time remembering to clean their plates after breakfast. So one early November morning, I looked at a plate of half-eaten pancakes and had an idea.

I’ll put them in a container, I decided, and wrap them as a gift to the kids for Christmas.

After stewing in the container for more than a month, mold covered those flapjacks and they were incredibly gross. The kids laughed and might have even gotten the point about doing a better job cleaning up around the house!

Another time I got my mother-in-law one of those big orange cones like you see at a construction site. This was the year she was refusing to get the hearing aids she obviously needed, so we told her she could hold the cone up to her ear if she wanted to hear what the rest of us were saying.

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Sue’s father, meanwhile, was a huge Ohio State fan. So one year when he visited us for Christmas, I took a toy basketball from the basement, wrote an inscription to him on it, and signed it as John Havlicek, who played at Ohio State before his Hall-of-Fame career with the Boston Celtics. We all laughed when he opened it up, but he thought it was real and was so excited about it that we never told him it was a gag.

Then there was the year Sue and I kept telling our kids we were thinking about adding another child to the family. This was just a few years ago, so Nicole and Matthew laughed it off. They were already adults, and Sue and I were in our early 60s. That year I got Sue a pregnancy test that showed a positive result. The kids love it.

The list goes on, and there are some examples that I simply can’t share. But they’ve all been gifts given in fun and, thankfully, received in that spirit. So I’ll keep on getting a gag gift for my wife, our children, their significant others, and anyone else who might be visiting us for Christmas. And they all do the same, so I, too, can be the butt of a few jokes.

I’m looking forward to this year’s gift opening. For one thing, Harper, our granddaughter, is now nearly two, so she’s old enough to be delighted by the gifts she’ll receive – none of which will be a joke! But I did get some doozies for the rest of the family, including something for her dad (our son-in-law) that I don’t think he’ll soon forget.

The holidays can be filled with joy, but they also can bring memories that involve pain and loss. So whether or not you celebrate Christmas, I hope you can find joy in the season that sees you through whatever aspects of it might be difficult. And if you find it hard to laugh a little along the way, just remember, it’s never too late to wrap up some leftover pancakes and give them to someone you love.