The Daycos Christmas Palm Tree

Each year, a small, plastic palm tree with Christmas lights is placed in the front area of the Daycos offices, across the lobby from our big, beautiful, real Christmas tree. While it doesn’t do much for the aesthetics of the office, it is placed there as an important reminder.

Thirty one years ago this month, Daycos was founded as John Day & Associates. It was right before Christmas, and my parents had moved our family across country to Alexandria, VA to start the business. I recall one of the first things I wanted to do when we got into our new house was to get a Christmas tree put up and decorated. My mother kept putting me off, saying we didn’t have time, and we would do it later.

As Christmas drew closer, she suggested we were going to run out of time and should just decorate this cheap, ugly, plastic palm tree that we had brought with us in the move. I was less than thrilled with this idea, and probably whined considerably about not having a real Christmas tree, but my mother was adamant that this would be the best solution. We gamely decorated that plastic palm tree with Christmas lights, but in the end, it was one of the saddest looking Christmas trees you had ever seen.

Of course I realized much later that the reason we didn’t have “time” to go get a real Christmas tree, is that we couldn’t afford one. My parents had saved some money back for presents for my sister and I, but the rest of their money was being spent trying to get this company going. They didn’t have any spare money for luxuries such as Christmas trees when they were trying to get a new business off the ground.

Obviously their hard work and determination paid off and the company they founded out of their basement of their rental house in December 1978 is still going strong and employs 50 full-time people. So every year, we pull out this little plastic palm tree (which is actually much nicer than the one we decorated that Christmas), and place it in the lobby of our offices to serve as a reminder for all of us of the sacrifices that were made to help get this company launched.

We also remember that it is not only the sacrifices made by the founders and past employees of the company that is cause for our success; we also owe a huge debt of gratitude towards our customers who have entrusted us over the years to be a part of their successes. So, from all of us at Daycos, please accept our sincere appreciation for your business, and our wishes for Happy Holidays and a Merry New Year.

p.s. Our office will be closing at noon on Thursday, December 24th and all day on Friday, December 25th so that our employees may celebrate Christmas with their families.

Related Posts

1. Stretching the Christmas Season into May - July 18th, 2006
2. Daycos Closed for the Christmas Holiday - December 19th, 2007
3. Daycos Closed for the Christmas Holiday - December 23rd, 2008