A seasonal job is a great way to capitalize on increased hiring needs and make some extra money around the holidays. Most retail stores and restaurants will be seeking additional help, but why not try something different this year? Here are ten jobs that’ll give you something to talk about over Thanksgiving dinner.
1. Christmas Decor Installer
Decorating is a festive way to get in the holiday spirit and show your neighbors how much better you are than them at the same time. Some blinking lights around the hedges, fake icicles under the rain gutter, and that sleigh you bought on clearance after Christmas last year on the roof? You’ll be the toast of the block! But why stop there?
As a Christmas Decor Installer, you can put your adornment skills to the test by decorating both homes and businesses for the upcoming holiday season. Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanza, New Year’s Eve and Day? – it’s a veritable marathon of festivities, and somebody’s gotta hang the popcorn garland and paint elves on the window. Never again will you look with envy upon that waving robot Santa in your neighbor’s front yard.
2. Organist
Do you fume at the sinister representations of organs in the media? Are you infuriated by depictions of villains pounding out foreboding chords in their lair, only to be caught by some “hero” that doesn’t even seem to play a musical instrument? If you feel it’s high time to reverse these unfair stereotypes, and can also play the organ, this Organist/ Music Director may be your dream opportunity. Showcasing your talents for families as they celebrate the holidays could illustrate the instrument’s true sublimity, and reaffirm it as a entertainment for good and evil alike.
The holidays are all about love and forgiveness. It’s time to forgive the organ.
3. Harvest Sampler
The holidays are all about celebration, tradition, and spending time with family, which generally also means drinking heavily. Luckily, wine grape harvest season is August through October, just before the three month parade of distant relatives and long dinners will leave you topping off glass after glass of Cabernet. As a Harvest Sampler, you’ll be tasked with determining whether this year’s crop has matured enough to be served at the grown up’s table this year.
4. Ski Instructor
The leaves are turning, the air is cooling, and the sun is setting sooner each day. While your friends lament the end of summer barbecues and bonfires, you’re already trying to enjoy hot cocoa in 75 degree weather and dusting off your fleeciest windbreakers. If only a deep and unyielding love of winter was somehow a job requirement, you’d be living your dream instead of getting kicked out of ice skating rinks for trying to stay overnight.
Well, now you can! As long as you also have an active PSIA/ASSI Alpine Certification. That’s right, ’tis the season to become a Ski Instructor.
Sure, you’ll also need to possess skills like upper body strength, lower body strength, and a working knowledge of how to ski, but a seasoned winter soul such as yourself was most likely born with these abilities innately. With benefits like retail and dining discounts, paid housing, and free range of the open slopes, you’ll be the ruler of your own winter wonderland.
5. Archery Specialist
Winter means a nearly month long vacation for most kids, who typically get bored in about fifteen minutes. Not every family goes to grandma’s house for the holidays, and many kids need extra stimulation to avoid the cabin fever that can result from staying inside watching claymation Santa Claus movies all day. No, board games and tag won’t cut it during the long cold winter. These kids need something more to sink their teeth into during the anxious time before their Christmas presents arrive. And that something, is archery. If you’re up to the challenge of maintaining a safe, fun atmosphere in a room full of children with sharp pointed sticks, apply to the YMCA now and accept your fate. Also, update your will. Just in case.
6. Gift Wrappers
There are two types of people in the world – those who can wrap presents, and those who can’t. Sure, anyone can tape a few pieces of colored paper over a gift, stick a bow over the worst part and hope for the best, but a true talent knows that the wrapping on a gift is the first, and perhaps most important, step of the gift giving process. Anticipation is crucial to a successful gift exchange, and some slapdash effort (or, god forbid, a gift bag) could ruin the recipient experience entirely. Preserve relationships and the time honored tradition of buying stuff this holiday season, and apply to be a professional Gift Wrapper. Being a perfectionist sometimes gets a bad rap, but it won’t get you a bad wrap.
7. Snowmaker
Not to be confused with snow angel making, Snowmaking is not for the faint of heart. In the role of Snowmaker, you’ll lay the foundation for timeless family memories by creating and maintaining literal snow, and performing quality control checks of mountain resort snow conditions. Qualified applicants may look tough, and by and large they are, but underneath their winter coats and calloused hands, deep in their winter-weathered hearts, they hold the silent poetry of still pines at midnight. A Snowmaker must be rugged enough to spend long, cold nights operating equipment heavy enough to alter the Earth’s landscape, yet gentle enough to see that no two snowflakes are alike.
A Snowmaker’s work is never done, until about mid-late January when the season ends.
8. Christmas Wreath Designer
You may think, as I once did, that the Christmas wreaths adorning doors, mantles, car bumpers, and other potentially festive surfaces are made by the tiny hands of a thousand happy elves. Where else would something as specific yet inexplicable as a branch bent into a circle and decorated with ribbons come from? Oregon, apparently, and if you have tiny efficient hands* and a desire to create delightfully perplexing holiday decorations, you may have just found your seasonal job.
*Position open to individuals possessing any size hands.
9. Hunting Sales Associate
It’s the same thing every year. As soon as October rolls around, you can’t escape the barrage of holiday decorations, Christmas music, and endless family get-togethers. Sure, you love the holiday season, but you can’t help but think of the brave and humble among us providing the main course at those family dinners. Hunting season starts in October, too, and you’re sick of playing second fiddle to the holidays that rely on your work, but take all the festive glory.
If you can relate to this plight, a seasonal role as a hunting store sales associate could be the perfect opportunity to support a time honored tradition and get a sweet discount on some gear. The holidays may always be the star of the winter season, but at least this year you’ll know who’s really bringing home the bacon.
10. Polar Express Characters
Have you always dreamed of bringing children joy as a mall Santa, but lacked the long white beard, cherry nose and jolly physique to believably play the part? Well, get ready for a Christmas miracle. This holiday season, you can work as an elf, townsperson, or the coveted Mrs. Claus on the Polar Express Railway trip to the North Pole! Sure, maybe you’ll physically be on a dinner theatre train in Arizona, but it’s your charge to lead children and the young-at-heart on a sparkling journey to a Christmas Wonderland.
“Must be willing to sing Christmas carols and create magic memories” is literally in the job description.
Photo via Flickr / MattysFlicks
