I could start with the things I love about the festive season. But it’s more fun, surely, to talk about the things I hate?
Top of the list are those appallingly manufactured experiences known as office Christmas parties. Now that I’m freelance, these are less of an chore. I more or less enjoy being invited to office parties of publishers and publications I work with. I get to put faces to names, nobody expects me to stay for long, and there are usually networking opportunities to make the coming year more profitable.
Back when I was a nine-to-five office worker, I used to dread Christmas parties.
I felt sick the moment the way-too-excited memo arrived in November. Usually arranged by some gruesomely needy HR minion, these bastardly bashes only seemed to be looked forward to by two categories of employee: friendless bores and resentful young fathers. For them, the chance to have a night out of the house with alcohol being consumed and other homo sapiens present was a novelty.
For the rest of us, it was punishment. I would pray I’d be struck with illness on the day of the get-together, and end-up concocting elaborate excuses to leave early. But whichever company I’ve worked for has always had that one bore, who theatrically bollocks anyone trying to escape: ‘Oh, you’re not splitting on us, are you?’ (Rough translation: ‘Christ, I wish I too had the guts to quit this pitiful charade.’)
Even worse is that trusty slice of anti-climax known as the New Years Eve party. I can’t stand the moment when crazy-eyed revellers start the midnight countdown: ’10! 9! 8! 7…’ It makes me want to run to the woods and writhe around on the ground in despair and embarrassment for the human race.
Enforced fun is no fun at all. Only those so unimaginative they are incapable of creating or even experiencing genuine, spontaneous fun can truly enjoy these phantasms of the festive season.
Bah humbug, I know.
In happier news, I do enjoy the special ‘red cup’ lattes that the big coffee chains rock out at this time of year. My favourite two are the Costa praline and cream latte, and the Starbucks toffee nut latte. I recently checked how many points I’ve amassed on my Costa card in 2012 and was pleasantly surprised by what I found. Bottom line: if the Mayan prophecies are true, I’ll never have to pay for coffee again.
Happy holidays!
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Lol!
The few Office Christmas parties I’ve been to (with my Hermolis meal) I’ve actually quite enjoyed. But I’m completely with you on the arbitrary artificialness of New Years Eve…
lol chas this is hysterical. i agree with you about office parties, although thankfully i have never had to attend one as of yet!!
Thanks!
I particularly agree with your comments about New Year’s parties and we always go to bed at our regular time on that night. In the morning we wish each other a happy new year.
And – I thoroughly enjoy and am encouraged by your website, maybe there’s hope for the world yet… monica (and josef) both holocaust survivors in the sense we got out.. would you like to see our “book”?
Thank you / shall I email you?
Yes, the Holidays are a morass: it’s that extended (and extended, and extended) moment when we’re supposed to indulge in intense feelings of Goodwill and Love For All Gd’s Creatures, etc.
The downside is that this translates in practice as permission to have intense feelings of every kind. So, even aside from the plastic absurdities of office holiday parties, family gatherings can be perilous, and are exhausting.
I fully intend to avoid my family’s Xmas get-together (I’m a convert to Judaism, so my family is approximately Christian. That’s not a problem in itself, I just wanted to clarify given I have a slight [and partisan] presence on Harry’s Place, where you do too), even though I almost like those get-togethers. It’s just that Thanksgiving this past weekend was just a bit too much.
Anyway, enjoy the seasonal lattes, and geh gezindt.
Rob
Christmas is pretty exotic for us here in Israel. I have never been to an office Christmas party and very likely never will. Working in Jaffa, I occasionally bump into a small plastic Christmas tree and some shiny decorations in a shop, but that’s about it. This year we booked into a guest house in Nazareth with friends for the weekend before Christmas, because they really fancied experiencing a bit of that foreign exoticism. Christmas itself is just an ordinary workday here. Maybe they have items about it on the news on telly, but I don’t watch much of that so I wouldn’t know.
So I hope everyone who has Christmas has a good time, making the most of the enjoyable and the less enjoyable.
Chas: I take it that alcohol abuse is a bigger problem in the UK than it is in Canada, at least in the two large insuarnce companies that I have worked for over the last 16 years. My former employers used to throw a great party at one of the nearby downtown hotels for a department of about 200 people. The committee that organized the party always did a great job of coming up with new ice breaker games and door prizes and very, few people if any, used the occasion to act like an @sshole / get blitzed. My current employer only puts on a sedate corporate mid-afternoon nosh. Employees each get a single chit for a glass of wine if they want one and on a departmental basis, we either go for a communal lunch at one of the nearby restaurants in the theatre district on our own dime or do a pot luck lunch.
But the December celebration I look forward to most is barely a week away. I’m pretty well non-observant, but come Chanuka, the menorah gets polished and I throw a party for 8 – 10 close friends (mostly not Jewish) where we chow down on my famously crispy latkes and smoked salmon.
There are two times of the year when people who don’t ordinarily go out, do: Christmas and New Year. Because they don’t do it the rest of the year, they’re no good at partying, and make it boring and non-fun for all other attendees.
They’re the people you find being the alcohol police (it doesn’t seem to matter if you drink too much, too little, or exactly the same amount as them: they’ll find a reason to comment that you should consume more or less than you’ve chosen, because it gives them something to do with their mouths and makes them feel important). They’re the people you find getting obnoxiously drunk themselves, and using that as an excuse to misbehave. Quiet blokes become horrible sex pests, and respectable librarian-like middle-aged women turn into embarrassing cougars. Most of all, you get those dreadful “secret santas” where the monotony of the cringe-worthiness of the presents is only offset by their frequent inappropriateness.
Christmas and work just don’t go together. It’s bad enough that companies inflict this annual morale suppressant on their staff at this time of year. I really hope that throwing a work do at New Year doesn’t catch on.