An Argument Against the Christmas Do

Christmas is a dangerous time of year to have a social gathering with work colleagues – I’d say ‘enjoy’ but does anyone really enjoy them? There's so much potential for things to go wrong and none of the options are good.

For a start, it’s dark and cold and (largely) cheerless and by rights and the laws of nature, you should stay home in the warm, hibernating in a huddle with loved ones, safe and cosy and only moving to throw a log on the fire or get up and pee. But do you do that? Do you heck.

Instead, you agree to the implausible suggestion of fun and team-bonding offered by a Christmas social gathering – which you’re too overworked and stressed to squeeze into a busy working week anyway, having also to squeeze in the tasks that need doing before the place closes for Christmas and also card-writing and present-buying in your lunch hours and evenings.

But you grasp the opportunity nevertheless, in Christmas jumpers or a sparkly tube dress, figgy pudding earrings and flashing reindeer antlers on your head, stuck on a table beside the disco speakers and chewing cardboard turkey and tinned brussels whilst laughing at cracker jokes with colleagues you can’t stand the sight of for 235 working days of the year but are now pretending you’re best buddies with.

Alcohol’s flowing and inhibition’s flying out the window on Christmas angels’ wings, and you’ve forgotten that whatever you say will be all round the factory by next Monday lunchtime. You’re spilling deepest darkest secrets that even your best friend from childhood doesn’t know – that your husband’s a tight-fisted arsehole you shouldn’t have married, that the temporary lad in Packing has a thing for you and you meet him Tuesday evenings in a pub the other side of Leicester where nobody knows you and his pregnant girlfriend with the brother just over from Sicily won’t get to hear about it; that you borrowed a bit of money from the petty cash tin to pay for this dress and will have to sneak it back on Monday before Bob in Accounting finds out.

It’s always the same. They say the divide between this world and the next weakens on Christmas Eve and spirits leak through, but the leaking happens well before then at the work’s Christmas do. And if you’re not careful, you’ll end the night snogging the face off the forklift driver from Outerwear in the back room of the Three Crowns, and after clocking-off time on Christmas Eve the ghosts of Christmas past and present will have emptied their desk in the office and kicked your future into touch.

So, Merry Christmas, one and all!

AM