Blast Christmas

You’re probably expecting a piece about how rubbish Christmas is and how much I hate it, right?

Well, you’d be wrong.

Sort of.

I enjoy some parts of Christmas. I like ompy-pompy brass bands in town squares, wide-eyed children finding plump stockings at the end of their beds, Eric and Ernie (mostly Eric) on the telly and – no irony here at all ­–­ the fact that it’s a festival that means a lot to millions of believers.

But here’s the problem. Look around my office, and you won’t see any of this. The only Christmassy stuff you see round here is the very worst the season has to offer. And not just here, either – I reckon that’s true of every workplace in the Crimbo-celebrating world.

It’s almost as if years ago all the business owners decided to roll Christmas up into a big ball, and scrape off all the pooey bits from the bottom for exclusive use in offices.

Let’s look at the evidence. What do you find in pretty well every office, every December? Parties fuelled by cheap booze in which fat, balding men lurch around after bunny-eyed interns in corners of dank clubs. Christmas trees decked up in corporate colours. Secret Santas where meaningless people exchange meaningless mugs, stationery items and dreadful ‘comedy’ soaps.

Stress around Christmas bonuses. Stress around whether HR has over-Christmasified and abused the inclusivity directive. Stress, just generally.

Hangovers. Christmas colds. Blisters. Cards from suppliers taking the opportunity to try to sell us more stuff. (Can they not stop advertising for just one moment and connect with us without pushing an agenda?)

But why are office Christmases so bad? Maybe because workplaces institutionally discourage all that is spiritual, soulful or tender.  Maybe because we’re all confused about whether the essentially Christian celebration can ever be suitably ‘diverse’. Definitely because there are no children in the office. (Immature people, sure. But this side of the trainer factories in Asia, few actual children.)

Definitely, too, because even though the internal communications folk love to burble on about the ‘organisational family’ the truth is that we are not a family. Oh, no. We’re a bunch of people who bite our tongues and cover our ears five days a week to put up with people we don’t particularly like in order to scrape a living.

So let’s ban office Christmases altogether. Instead, we’ll all put the money we spend on cards, decorations, meals, drinks and legal settlements into a big pot and give it to charity – or to the ompy-pompy brass bands in the rural towns.

Yes, perhaps we’ll miss out on an opportunity for team bonding. But we can do that some other time of year. June, perhaps, when the sun is shining, the days are longer and the interns have a better chance of seeing those fat blokes coming.

About the author

The Villain

The Villain is not here to be nice.