Why office Christmas parties are never a good idea

Charles Dickens, who all but invented the modern Christmas spirit, knew that office parties were best avoided, as might well be expected of English Literature’s most perceptive student of enforced jollity and its malign underbelly. 

In A Christmas Carol, the Ghost of Christmas Past takes Scrooge back to the seasonal festivities put on by kindly Mr Fezziwig, the future miser’s first employer. The young man finds himself unable to join wholeheartedly in the fun, prompting the collapse of his romance with Belle, his first love. Scrooge is the fictional avatar of the many real life broken hearts after Christmas parties. 

Once Scrooge has been shown the error of his ways he sagely avoids rictus-faced bonhomie. He does not try to “party” – dreadful verb, Bah Humbug! Instead, he sends a messenger around with supplies for Tiny Tim and the Cratchit family and gives his toiling clerks the day off.

Office Christmas parties are bad news. Will we never learn? 

The latest victim of the curse is Allegra Stratton, Boris Johnson’s sometime spokesperson – even though she “went home” and wasn’t even present at the alleged, offending social occasion last December. Stratton had to go because she was caught on tape smirking and smiling about her colleagues’ apparent flouting of the Covid rules which were then in force. 

In Stratton’s resignation speech, she said with tearful sincerity that she will regret her behaviour for the rest of her days. The video recording of her mock press conference shows she was clearly uneasy but like so many she allowed herself to be carried away by the mood of the moment, only to face a walk of shame afterwards.

In four decades of working life, I don’t think I’ve ever been to an official Christmas party laid on by employers. The drink may be free but the pitfalls are plentiful. Avoid. Avoid. Avoid. Blinded by the festive spirit why pretend to like most of your colleagues, when this can mean getting tipsy, slagging off the boss or being ill-advisedly up close and personal with a co-worker. 

It turns out that my reservations are not exceptional. The Sun must have been disappointed by its party season sex survey this week which exposed a decidedly limp national libido. Only 17 per cent confessed to having “slept with a colleague at a Christmas party”, even fewer, just 10 per cent, are planning on cheating on their partner at the work Christmas party. A minority (42 per cent) own up to having “secretly lusted over a colleague at work.” 

Not too much sex please, we’re British. In the age of #MeToo, three cheers for the Cabinet Minister Therese Coffey who warned last week against “snogging under the mistletoe”. 

Violence comes more easily to the inebriated. The late MP and historian Alan Clarke once caused a storm by refusing to condemn football hooligans because he maintained they were the modern-day embodiments of the British martial spirit which triumphed over enemies from Agincourt to the trenches to Waterloo. As the Duke of Wellington observed, “I don’t know what effect these men will have on the enemy, but by God they frighten me”. 

Set aside the braggadocio and these days mild pushing and shoving can have severe consequences. A salesman called Clive Bellman sued for a million pounds after suffering brain damage when his boss punched him after a Christmas party. Walk down any city centre street at party time and the night air is pierced by swearing and the sweet aroma of pools of vomit, otherwise known as pavement pizzas. 

It is relatively easy to avoid your own office party by not turning up. Some other invitations are difficult to refuse. If ministers or opposition leaders invite you to have a drink, it is really part of your job to turn up. Something newsworthy might happen or, theoretically, some useful contacts might be made. The dutiful reporter ends up in some dingy space with the furniture pushed back to the walls, drinking warm beer from a bottle or wine from a plastic cup, attempting stilted small talk with Theresa May or another sparkling Westminster conversationalist. Such encounters may depend on the host actually showing up at their own party. The last time Boris Johnson held a legitimate Christmas do for the Lobby, in 2019, he was absent for most of it, only turning up in the last few minutes to deliver a speech haranguing the hacks for not giving him sufficient backing. 

There are some parties that are so grand that attendance is almost mandatory. Until he went to prison the best-selling author and Conservative politician Jeffrey Archer was renowned for his Krug champagne and shepherd’s pie receptions, strictly only for la crème de la crème. Archer enthusiastically played the bouncer, throwing out gate crashers in person. At one party conference, I went to bed instead of attending his midnight soiree and missed two cabinet ministers having a punch-up. Thereafter I attended assiduously. At Christmas, Lord Archer entertained in his riverside duplex overlooking parliament. On departure, he kindly gave each guest a whole cheddar cheese. Late at night, right honourable members could be spotted staggering across Lambeth Bridge clutching this generous but ungainly gift. 

Rupert Murdoch held an annual shindig for “friends and family” at his St James duplex. This category extended to the top members of the government of the day. Citizen Murdoch remained habitually and laconically underwhelmed by their grovelling acceptance of his hospitality. In recent years the newspaper proprietor Lord Evgeny Lebedev has hosted a rival event as if to prove that his home is far from the social Siberia of his title.

Last year, law-abiding hosts high and low were spared the trouble. Christmas parties were banned thanks to Covid and the risks of super-spreading through socializing. The Omicron variant has sent things trending that way again. Public Health Scotland has already prohibited seasonal get-togethers, although in the present circumstances Sir Humphrey might consider extending a ban to England “rather a bold move, Prime Minister.” 

I have received no stiff card invitations this year. Perhaps I am simply NFI. Most big companies and organisations have already explicitly cancelled their plans or seem never to have made them. 

Less flash social gatherings of real friends are going ahead. In my relatively ageing and concerned social set, plague time social etiquette now includes a polite message in advance asking those invited to take a PCR test on the day and not to come if it is positive. Before entering someone’s home I was even asked to show my NHS vaccine status. 

These parties are smaller because hosts know that their guests don’t want to be crammed together breathing each others’ exhalations. They are more pleasant as a result. These days Lord Archer only invites his genuine friends round for a drink. The reformed Ebeneezer Scrooge behaves similarly, opting to take up the invitation he earlier spurned to celebrate with family. That’s the true spirit of Christmas.