The ghost of Christmas past

The other day I found this passage in one of my favorite anthologies of all time: Drinking, Smoking and Screwing. (Also not to be missed is the companion volume: Lying, Cheating and Stealing.) It is the opening to "The Office Party" by Corey Ford:

There are several methods of getting through the Christmas holidays. One is to board a ship in San Francisco and sail for the Orient, arranging to cross the International Dateline at midnight on Christmas Eve. As a result, the next day on teh calendar, will be December 26th, and our Christmas will have been a total blank.

Another way to make your Christmas a total blank is to attend an Office Party the day before . . .

The annual Office Party statrs along about noon on December 24 and ends two or three months later, depending how long it takes the boss to find out who set fire to his wastebasket, threw the water cooler out of the window, and betrayed Miss O'Malley in the men's washroom. By the time the entire Accounting Department has been dismissed and the painters have finished doing over the two lower floors which were ruined when somebody turned on the sprinkler system at the festivities' height, the moment has arrived to start planning next year's party, which everyone vows will be even more hilarious than the last one. Next year all the guests will be supplied with shin guards and hockey sticks.

There's something very revealing about the tropes that drop out of the popular literary imagination. Last night, I was talking to a friend about American Inventor, and it occurred to me that the crazy fellow who tinkers in his basement with inventions that never quite work has pretty much entirely fallen out of fashion in literature and movies--even though the show illustrates that the phenomenon is still very much alive.

Similarly, the wild, drunken office Christmas party used to be a staple of television, books, and movies. Now I feel as if it's dropped pretty thoroughly out of the popular imagination; the only example I can think of recently is a fleeting scene in Bridget Jones' Diary. Were office holiday parties really that much wilder in the past? Or have we just stopped noticing, literarily?

Comments

I think they just have stopped.

It's a cost, cost's need to be cut, quarterly earnings must be above the forecast, lest I get that promotion.

Posted by scrooge | December 17, 2007 3:25 PM

I'm guessing they went out of style along with the three-martini lunch, perhaps in conjunction with the anti-drunk driving movement.

Posted by Ditch | December 17, 2007 3:26 PM

Fear of litigation and the sobriety fad did it.

There was a big shift between the 1980s and the 1990s at my marketing research company.

Posted by Steve Sailer | December 17, 2007 3:44 PM

The TV series Mad Men depicted a Christmas party very much like the one described in this post, but given that the party was for Christmas, 1960, MM's point that the trope is fading may still stand.

Posted by kishin | December 17, 2007 4:01 PM

I think sexual harrassment torts killed off whatever wildness cultural trends hadn't already done away with.

Posted by Jim Clay | December 17, 2007 4:04 PM

SRSLY.

Those damn sexual harassment prevention laws. Always preventing me from copping a feel and setting fire to wastebaskets, hurling watercoolers out of windows, and turning on sprinkler systems.

Posted by Rickm | December 17, 2007 4:15 PM

What Jim Clay said. That sort of thing has been mostly driven out by sexual harassment litigation. The effect is that we have a more bifurcated world: a world of popular entertainment where women are bitches and hos who are exhorted to shake their moneymakers, and an office/MSM world where women are pure ethereal creatures, who are spiritually superior to the brutish males and who find the mention of sex unpleasant. Not too different from the Victorian world, in its way.

As with the Victorians, there is occasionally a little tension when the two worlds collide (e.g., when investment bankers want to put their night at the strip club on the expense account), but mostly the two worlds stay separate.

Posted by y81 | December 17, 2007 4:28 PM

I've worked for 25 years and have never been to a wild Christmas Party.

Posted by David Pinto | December 17, 2007 4:41 PM

Did you see the last episode of 30 Rock?

Posted by Riemannian | December 17, 2007 4:48 PM

while I'm sure that the lawsuits didn't help... I think maybe the atmosphere of that style of party has passed... how many people have something called a cocktail party anymore? People still party, no doubt, but it seems less a formal affair with planning and so forth. Especially for the part of the workforce that is in their family years, it seems like too much trouble, and so some percentage just beg off. Once you fall below a critical mass of people to go to a party? They stop having it... This is compounded by the cost cutting as mentioned, and the potential for getting sued for having a party in which somebody gets betrayed in the mensroom, or stairwell...

When they still had holiday parties at my work, and when I was still married, the [ex]wife refused to go, saying she didn't have anything to wear, it would be too hard to find a babysitter, and so forth. Now? we have completely sanitized lunches for core teams, and naturally spouses/SO's aren't part of that... and half don't show because they have scheduling conflicts, because of telcons and meetings...

What it really seems to take, is finding someone that WANTS to take the brunt of pulling it together come hellorhighwater. These types usually get stuck doing it until they can't stand it, simply because no-one wants to. An old frient who works for D&T just pulled off the Chicago partners party for 850 people... One year I chot couples pictures for her at the Washington Library, and it was a good gig, and actually quite lively, but that is because the partners foot the bill. Heh, we figured out the big draw, and it's prolly still true today:

so you go downtown to a really great shin-dig, have a few drinks, and since the kids are at your mother's house overnight... well, you run off to the closest hotel, and remeber what it's like to be randy... hopefully with the date you brung.

You can't do that as easily with the pot-luck in the cafeteria.

Posted by SwissArmyD | December 17, 2007 4:49 PM

After all that unpleasantness at the Nakatomi Christmas bash in '88 insurers threatened to revoke the policies of companies that continued to throw wild holiday parties.

Posted by JB | December 17, 2007 4:54 PM

I think there are still plenty of cocktail parties, at least among the upper middle class. We have one every year, and get invited to plenty, and anytime you walk around the Yale Club or the typical country club there are plenty of parties going on, some of them fairly wild. I really think it's just in the workplace that they have declined.

Also, even when there is work party, at least in New York City, it is mostly the messengers and secretaries who drink and dance. The investment bankers have learned that hitting on a secretary or some toothsome young analyst will get you in trouble, whereas if you meet the same girl in a bar it won't be a problem. Since the upper middle classes aren't participating in the work parties, whatever does happen doesn't resonate through popular culture.

Posted by y81 | December 17, 2007 5:00 PM

During (and for a few decades after) Prohibition, alcohol was considered to be the mark of sophistication. Teetotaling was the mark of cultural enemies. The battle lines have shifted since then.

Posted by Joseph Hertzlinger | December 17, 2007 5:12 PM

To a bunch of good answers above, I'd add:

1) The dilution of the WASP business elite by groups who don't drink nearly as much, especially in public. (y81 tangentially references this.)

2) You can't have a bunch of drinks, or even a couple, and drive home, due to changing legal and social standards.

Posted by JSinger | December 17, 2007 5:37 PM

Well, don't know about the puritan US, but here in Canada drunken office parties are still the norm. Ours last weekend had lots of alcohol, some dancing on the table etc. Nothing TOO wild, but not alcohol free.

Went to an open house at a competitor last night, where the open bar is still very much the norm. At ours last year we caught a client in the server room with one of her bosses...

It's weird because if the answers above are correct (political correctness, sexual harassment laws etc.), then you would think Christmas parties in Canada would be far tamer than their counterparts in the US.

Posted by Ginna | December 17, 2007 6:16 PM

Most of the wild office parties in the movies I've seen were actually held in the office, sans spouses. For example, The Apartment. The modern office party is held in a banquet hall on the weekend with spouses present, in my experience, which means its much less likely to be a piss-up.

Posted by kurtimus | December 17, 2007 6:25 PM

NYC law firms still do insane parties, some explicitly excluding spouses.

Speaking for myself, I wouldn't go to such a party.

Posted by Rob Lyman | December 17, 2007 6:44 PM

I have to raise this, but were office parties *ever* that wild? Everyone, especially writes, likes to tell us that life was far more sybaratic and carefree back in the old days. I don't buy it.

Posted by Mike | December 17, 2007 6:51 PM

A more contemporary vision:

The annual Office Party starts at 4 PM sharp on the Friday of the week before Christmas and concludes at 5 PM sharp. Due to only being able to carry 8 vacation days forward into the new year, the office is half empty as the approaching deadline triumphs over the gentle disuassion from taking time off applied by the management staff.

As the clock strikes 4, the staff trickle into the break room, shambling their way into two queues, one on each side of a table containing a modest selection of cookies, some chips, and maybe a veggie platter.

Most file back to their desks with their plate laden with treats, having recieved their fill of social contact with their collegues through the course of normal business, content to while away some fraction of the remaining 45 minutes with some light work or web browsing as they munch (which is just as well as there aren't nearly enough chairs for everybody) before ducking out early.

A few stragglers remain in small clusters, mostly talking business or about the regional sports teams, since it is the only sure thing that they have in common and broaching any subject more controversial than professional sports while at work is strongly discouraged by company policy. Gradually, the stragglers trickle out, returing to their desks briefly before departing for the evening. Finally, the last remaining cluster, consisting of the management staff, exit the break room, the moment having arrived to start planning next year's holiday party, which they vow will not be used by as many people as an excuse to cut out early. Next year it will be scheduled during lunch.

Posted by MattXIV | December 17, 2007 7:00 PM

Some of it could be the same new puritanism that's put the kibosh to the three martini lunch and made it dangerous to drink at all and drive. But I've got to wonder if at least part of it isn't the greater mobility of the modern work force. It's easier to let it all hang out with a bunch of people you've worked with for 15 years, not so easy when you hardly know half your fellow workers.

In similar vein, we used to do a lot more socializing with our clients when we worked with the same people on project after project, year after year. We knew those folks and they knew us. Now, even though it's mostly the same companies, the personnel are all a bunch of newbs and everyone is too worried about making good impressions to have a good time.

Posted by Swen Swenson | December 17, 2007 8:02 PM

Regarding some of the comments above, although Canada is more politically correct than the U.S. in many ways, I am not so sure it is politically correct in the sense of applying severe monetary sanctions to companies where executives make sexual overtures to, or have sexual relations with, subordinates. I think that this is to some extent a phenomenon peculiar to the U.S., produced by a strange combination of sexual conservatism, feminism, and a civil litigation system that relies on heavily on juries. Those phenomena don't exist in Europe; I don't know about Canada.

Posted by y81 | December 17, 2007 8:04 PM

Gina wrote: It's weird because if the answers above are correct (political correctness, sexual harassment laws etc.), then you would think Christmas parties in Canada would be far tamer than their counterparts in the US.

Difference is, down here we allow all takers to enforce the boundaries via generous tort laws. Even a Canadian winter can't have that kind of chilling effect.

At any rate, my expectation is that the number of wild office parties in the movies as compared to real life, is about the same as the number of people in the movies versus real life who can wake up first thing in the morning looking like a Perfect 10, smile blissfully, passionately kiss whoever is lying next to them, and then wander downstairs to fire up the espresso steamer without stopping by the can. In the movies, that also happens frequently; myself, the first thing I go for is a washcloth and a toothbrush. The bear-bereaved-of-cubs appearance don't fade until after a hot shower or the second cup of coffee, whichever comes first.

Posted by anony-mouse | December 17, 2007 8:19 PM

I'm not so sure if sexual harassment and DWI laws are quite the full story. Getting intoxicated and/or misbehaving in front of people you work with every day, including quite likely your supervisors, just isn't most peoples' idea of fun.

Posted by Peter | December 17, 2007 10:44 PM

I find these comments to be completely opposite of my experience. Many of my holiday parties (consulting firms) in the last few years have been pretty wild with a ton of drunk people (analyst to partner). This year featured a Vodka fountain...

Maybe it's industry specific because my other friends in consulting have the same exprience independent of the company. Granted the average age of these companies is probably lower then 35.

Posted by k9 | December 17, 2007 11:27 PM

The top headline this evening on my LinkedIn profile was a story from an Australian paper, featuring a warning from Kelly Services to client companies about the "hazards" of office parties.

Posted by Sarah | December 17, 2007 11:28 PM

Office party culture is still alive & well in Pittsburgh, PA.

(un)Officially, management says, f--- the liability. Corp Culture is more valuable. 110 ee's, privately held corp.

1st tier hotel, open bar, gourmet sit down dinner. Awesome door prizes.

Results? relatively low pay scale, low staff turnover, harmonious staff relations.

U du da math.

Posted by Steelheader | December 17, 2007 11:31 PM

After all that unpleasantness at the Nakatomi Christmas bash in '88 insurers threatened to revoke the policies of companies that continued to throw wild holiday parties.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!

Thanks, JB! You made my night! Just once, I'd like a regular, normal Christmas. A little eggnog... a f'in' Christmas tree... a little turkey. But, no. I gotta crawl around in this m'f'in' tin can.

I think it was the Jim Bohannon show last week where they were interviewing this woman who has written a book on how to suck up and how not to embarrass yourself at the office holiday party. She had a cold, calculating strategy and rationale for virtually every situation. It pretty much sucked all of the joy right out of even the thought of a holiday party.

Posted by Martin L. Shoemaker | December 17, 2007 11:40 PM

The "greatest generation" like booze a lot more than the boomers do. The "greatest generation" drank all the time, and heavily. The 50's, oft remembered nostalgically, was a big booze era. I know; I was a kid then. The baby boomers switched to pot, and they never got into booze the way their parents had. I was in college from 1968-1972, the peak of the "youthquake" and everybody smoked pot all the time, and went on acid trips occasionally, but nobody drank. After pot, the boomers switched to aerobics, anad then heavy duty child-rearing, and neither of those is compatible w/ heavy booze.

Now, as the baby boomers fade from the scene, I have a feeling that the next generation, whatever they are called, may be taking to booze again. Just an impression I have that the young seem to be going to bars a lot, and they like cocktails. They may be returning to their grandparents' habits.

Posted by Park Slope Pubby | December 17, 2007 11:56 PM

My company used to have a Christmas party; spouses were invited, but not all came. After the last one -- almost 25 years ago -- one man's wife stabbed him when they got home. They both had had too much to drink, and she accused him of paying too much attention to young female co-workers. That was the end of the parties.

Posted by Helen | December 17, 2007 11:58 PM

Well lets be clear, theres still lots of parties that have lots of people from the company in attendance, but there are few 'office parties' anymore because of the simple fact that a company holding said banchanalian rite, especially on the company premises, would be held accountable for the drunken staff and all of their actions as they make their way back home at the end of the party.

Drunk driver? Bad.
Drunk driver with a history of drinking? Badder.
Drunk driver with a history of drunkedness who is VP of a large electronic company, who kills a family of 4 after the annual Christmas party, where the company knowing full well the proclivities of the employee supplied the alcohol to him at said party - Worst.

Say hello to bankruptcy court and 500 employees are out of a job, not to mention the 4 people who dont get any sort of Christmas ever again and the one blacked out VP who after everything cant remember any of it.

From the company perspective, having an annual "christmas party" of any sort is just not worth risking the potential for litigation. So, in todays world the annual "holiday party" becomes a glorified friday lunch, under close supervision by the low level management and ends up about as wild as a Salvation Army band practice, where the CEO invariably talks too long about the exciting quarter ahead and blah, blah blah. You can just smell the toner, cant you?

The smart folks just go home early that day and start drinking heavily at home and spend most of the evening wondering just what kind of sick, cruel bastard their high school guidance councilor was for getting them into this gig in the first place.

Posted by frank martin | December 17, 2007 11:58 PM

How sad this all sounds. In Ireland and England the x-mas party is a full-on debauchery. No spouses, no rules (except violence), no consequences. All is forgiven the next day at work. I really enjoy it.

Posted by bob mologna | December 18, 2007 12:49 AM

Feminism killed everything "wild" in the workplace.

Posted by Jeff | December 18, 2007 12:55 AM

This one's easy. Driving all the smokers underground used up all the fun.

Good going, Puritans! Have fun dying of nothing!

Posted by Brett | December 18, 2007 1:09 AM

Hmm. I've been to a few office parties; there was alcohol, and some drank a lot of it, but no-one made a major fool of him-or-herself as I recall. A good time was had by all, as the cliche goes.

Now, there was ONE company I once worked for, which clamped down on alcoholic get-togethers soon after mid 2001. Its HR department was very PC, and its staff included many oft-offended Michael-Moore-worshipping Muslims. (This company around that time further decided that Good Friday wasn't worth observing, which also agrees with Muslim doctrine; c.f. sura 4, Jesus wasn't crucified.) So holiday celebrations tended to follow the template which MattXIV and "Office Space" before him have outlined. Thank heaven, I am free of those miserable cowards.

Posted by DR | December 18, 2007 1:21 AM

No smoking indoors
No more than 1 drink or two beers
No touching (unless you get the Clinton free grope) Company liable for millions in lawsuits if anything goes wrong, anywhere at anytime with anyone.
No dating in the office, even if both are unmarried

New Victorians, indeed.

Posted by tyree | December 18, 2007 1:39 AM

It isn't just litigation, it's the _fear_ of litigation, too. It only takes _one_ offended person to create huge problems for everyone involved, and there are parasitic lawyers and firms eagerly waiting for a chance to pounce.

Also, two entire generations have now been raised with a set of cultural expectations that hang over all activities. Women who not personally offended by 'wild parties' often feel on some level that they _should_ be, and men assume their wives, girlfriends, etc, will be offended even if in fact they aren't. It permeates the culture.

And yes, the Boomers, as a generation, _are_ puritanical, it's a cyclical thing and history suggests they'll get worse with age. The actual generation of the true Puritans were wild and crazy in their youth, too.

Posted by HC | December 18, 2007 1:40 AM

general cultural change. When my father's friend was in drivers ed in college circa 1960, they advised him "if you have more than a six pack, call a cab." Quite a distance from today's 0.08 drunk driver laws.

Posted by Rix | December 18, 2007 1:53 AM

Sarah's linked story says it all, really:

"Kelly Services has warned that employers and their staff need to be aware that Christmas celebrations are, under the eyes of the law, classed as a work function and _behaviour or incidents are the employer’s responsibility under employment law._"

This is the same phenomenon that makes my employer run boring and inane 'training' films every so often about workplace safety and sexual harassment, it's _lawsuit protection_.

It only takes _one_ offended person, or one person willing to _say_ she (or sometimes he) was offended...

Posted by HC | December 18, 2007 1:59 AM

In 25 years in Industry, I've been to 4 christmas parties. Most firms in Australia don't have them, any more than they have Christmas bonusses.
Of those 4, 3 were held in Restaurants, more informal banquets than parties.

The 4th was a sad affair, held at 4:30 on a Friday, and where those attending had their pay docked for time off work - and all in the firm, whether attending or not, were docked to pay for it. Potato chips, dips, cheap beer, and an interminable address about tightening belts in the new year, all in the lunchroom. Senior management were elsewhere in the building, entertaining clients.

Posted by Zoe Brain | December 18, 2007 2:48 AM

I've experienced a few fairly wild office parties at small startup companies in the Richardson/Plano, TX Telecom Corridor area. I guess the fear of litigation was mitigated by being too poor to sue. The mostly male engineering workforce left little opportunity for sexual harassment so we mostly just drank company provided beer and talked. Frequent beer drinking at work seemed to to foster good inter-departmental communication which sped up product development. The ultimate over-the-top office party I've heard of had to be holding a destruction derby contest with old beater cars on a field near work...after getting good and drunk.

Posted by George B | December 18, 2007 3:06 AM

While these may be outliers, recent episodes of 30 Rock and Chuck featured some extensive yuletide debauchery.

Posted by michael | December 18, 2007 3:19 AM

On one side, you have the social conservative movement teaching people that sex is bad, abstinence only/purity ball...sort of thing. Its the high moral crowd that banned online gambling and started Branson Missouri. You also have the Nancy Reagan, "Just Say No" generation all grown up. From the other side you have the left pushing anti-smoking laws and lower blood alcohol limits. Mix that with the litigation aspect and you have the new victorian era.

In NYC where people still rely on subways and cabs, I can attest that the holiday parties are still insane. Many of my friends have woken up in strange beds with people from department they'd never even heard of. I never went that far but kissing co-workers happened a few times back when I was still single. Then again, as my favorite song of the year says, "NYC is the farthest you can get from the government." Under Giuliani's reign, I lived right down the street from a well-known cocaine bar called "Kokie's". Bloomberg shut that down though. Ironically though, under giuliani, places would get closed down all the time if patrons danced and the bar/restaurant didn't have a "cabaret" (dancing) license. More than a couple people moving "rhythmically" was enough to lose your liquor license. Go figure.

Posted by Nylund | December 18, 2007 4:11 AM

My take: Inverse relationship between the size/visibility/"importance" of your company and the fun had at the Christmas party. Been with a securities regulator for 22 years and back in the day, when we had fewer employees and weren't hardly known to the public, our bashes were pretty crazy. Especially the tech folks, the programmers...those people knew how to drink! Now we've about quintupled in size, running ads on TV, and there's an unspoken yet large rule written on the wall, that you can see if you squint your eyes a bit: That stuff ain't cool anymore.

I gave up the hooch anyways, as it was on its way to killing me. All's well that ends well.

Posted by Zregime | December 18, 2007 5:54 AM

Yes, the Office Christmas party is dead and gone, a thing very much of the past. We can all lament it's passing and look for the culprit or culprits: Political Correctness, the bifurcated culture, the litigous nature of our society, etc., but for those of you who never got a change to actually attend one of these beasts? I pity you, because I have and it was an event to remember.

In the late 90's I worked for a company where the pay was mediocre, the work was monotonous, and the stress was incredible. The only thing that made it worthwhile were the semi-annual parties, the company picnic held during the 4th of July week and the Christmas Party. The company spared no expense, possibly factor of being a family owned operation. Fully stocked bars, beer and wine flowing like water, a buffet spread that must have cost $20 a plate and a live band. The events were never scheduled to last more than two hours but they always lasted about five or six. In the summer time underwear would be found in the bushes for days afterward, and in the winter we played "tack the panties to the breakroom bulletin board" and waited to see who would claim them. Relationships were forged, marriages were lost, and sometimes babies were conceived. The three years I worked there generated a few dozen anecdotes that I relish telling to this day, each of them related in some way to one of those parties. I can understand why companies don't want the risk and expense of hosting them, but people don't know what they're missing if they've never been to one.

Posted by Maurice | December 18, 2007 7:21 AM

Well, when I started working back in the 1970s the office parties *were* that wild. I remember oysters on the half shell (with a man to open them to order), an open bar, and bodies under the tables -- and that was in the office. I worked at a trade association which threw a Christmas party for the press, and that was beyond parody. It wrapped up at about midnight with the VP Public Affairs taking those who could still stand out to a bar to continue bending elbows.

But that was then, and this is now, and we have cookies...Canada may still have wild office parties, but that's because they're usually about 25 years or so behind the US, socially.

Posted by Shore Tower | December 18, 2007 8:00 AM

My take: Inverse relationship between the size/visibility/"importance" of your company and the fun had at the Christmas party.

This has pretty much been my experience with office Christmas parties, to a T.

Posted by GiovanniAPeters | December 18, 2007 8:48 AM

What's a Christmas party?

With company supplied booze and mild debauchery?

Seriously, I apprently need to find a funner grade of company. Never even *heard* of that, outside of novels and stupid TV shows.

Posted by Fred | December 18, 2007 9:14 AM

When I first started working my employer threw a hell of a bash. They rented an entire mountainside hotel and gave all employees a night's stay, $100 cash for travel expenses, a huge party with 6 hours of open bar and two days worth of lift tickets. No one had to drive, a few people made idiots of themselves and more than a few had relations with other office staff. This went on until the company got too big and it just wasn't realistic. But I miss those days.

Posted by Andy | December 18, 2007 9:45 AM

The best parties I ever attended were in the Air Force overseas, where there was a sense of camaraderie and mission. Of course, it was unthinkable to litigate and probably impossible. So there were no lawyers to spoil the fun.

I've noted a general decline in office parties over the last twenty years. Happy hours have become extinct, partly because alcohol has become unfashionable in the public corporate world, partly because of the lack of loyalty between employees and their employers. I've noticed that when the first layoffs come at a company, the parties stop dead. People just don't want to invest any emotional energy in a social event for a company which regards them as so many units of labor to be added or subtracted at will.

A rogue company in this regard was Southwest Airlines, which hosts a kegger every Friday on its roof, each one sponsored by a different department. A young and stupid woman who worked with me drank her fill of beer at one such party and drove drunk off the road, totalling her car and suffering brain damage. Of course, she sued Southwest. Nowadays, if you drink too much and run amok, you are not to blame but somebody else, anybody else. Usually, it is the entity with the deepest pockets, however casual its association with the event. Obviously, the legal climate has killed these kinds of office parties.

I worked for a string of Internet and telecom companies in the back half of the '90s. I can't help but notice that all the companies which threw the best, most fabulous parties were the ones who went bankrupt within a couple years. The companies which remained above water generally threw sober little parties in their main confererence rooms or in the Holiday Inn banquet room. Who wants to go to that?

The other enemy of office parties and fun at the office in general is the witch hunters of HR. Nowadays, any woman can concoct any accusation of harassment by a male coworker out of thin air, take it to HR, and win. HR departments do not verify the accuracy or legitimacy of such complaints, but accept the grievance as its own proof. If you are a white male, you are guilty. No guy is gonna cut loose at work nor the office party with women around unless he wants to be a kamikaze ending his job in front of a kangaroo court of hopelessly biased HR women looking to hang a white male oppressor.

The Christmas party is the last holdout of office parties, an artifact of a more social office environment from decades past. No company is willing to abandon the Christmas party, though they change it to the Holiday Party or Winter Party. It's become the Not Christmas Party.

SRA, the big consulting firm here in Washington, throws one of the best Not Christmas parties, partly by not throwing it at Christmas but sometime in January through Aprile. They rent a big hotel or even the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum, have several ballrooms with bands in each, and pile on the food. Any company that threshes up mounds of shrimp at their Not Christmas party can't be bad. Maybe throwing Not Christmas parties in the spring is the future of the Christmas party.

However, any smart guy knows that you don't go to the Not Christmas party to have fun. You go to show your face, bond with the coworkers in a sanitized way, and introduce your wife to your coworkers and their wives. The wives like that. But you don't want to go early nor stay late. Get in and get out. Make your appearance, put on your show, and never forget that you are still at work. You can't cut loose, can't talk politics nor religion, nor express an opinion outside of work. There's just not that kind of play in the politically correct corporate wheel anymore.

It may be, with the current war on Christmas, that the Not Christmas parties will be driven out into the spring to die some day in the future.

Posted by Steve Gregg | December 18, 2007 9:55 AM

I dunno, maybe we just all decided to start acting like mature adults instead of overripe frat boys.

...nah, that can't be it.

Posted by jblog | December 18, 2007 10:09 AM

Part of the problem is that, in response to the factors mentioned above (harassment laws, drinking laws, no-fun-allowed laws, etc.), corporations now have the philosophy that when you come to work, you leave your personality at home. So when the company then turns around and throws a Christmas function, and they expect you to be lively and fun, it feels like entrapment.

Posted by Cousin Dave | December 18, 2007 10:13 AM

The points about liability are all true. My company was one of the last holdouts; they still served alcohol at the 2006 Christmas party. This year, no alcohol. The CEO apologized, and said it was due to the liability issues.

Posted by Ash | December 18, 2007 10:20 AM

I've spent my entire career with DoE contractors. The holiday party (no one says "Christmas" any more) is held up to a week before Christmas itself, mostly because you can't count on employees being around after that, but partly to bridge the gap between Christmas and Chanukah so as to better cover both. It's typically a lunch potluck in the break room, and the spread has often been pretty good. I usually have to waddle home afterwards. On occasion it's been dinner at a local restaurant or a manager's home. In the latter cases there will be modest quantities of alcohol. No alcohol in the office area; there is a feeling that alcohol and proper handling of classified material doesn't mix. No skin off my nose since I don't drink.

I have never seen wildness, probably because wildness and holding a security clearance don't mix. I've never heard of a case of sexual harrassment. But then my profession (computational physics) has a male-to-female ratio of about 30 to 1 in spite of strenuous efforts to recruit more females.

Managers and staff get along fairly well in my world, largely because we share a common enemy (the Department of Energy [except, of course, that we and the Department of Energy share another common enemy, Congress.]) Hence things tend to remain amicable before and after our parties.

Anyway, once Christmas hits, we aren't back in the office until after New Year's Day. I get Christmas and New Year's Day as holidays; the days in between, and sometimes around, I am required to take as vacation. I am also required to fill out a time card, even though I'm supposedly a salaried employee. I suppose this is to permit the bean counters to determine which projects I actually worked on. However, around this time of year, the bean counters want the time cards filled out in advance, which seems to kind of defeat the purpose.

Posted by Kent | December 18, 2007 11:23 AM

I work for a huge international law firm and this year, as always, they put on a great feast with an open bar and there was much merry making. It's nothing like the parties from twenty years ago, however. You could always count on at least new associate throwing up on a partners shoes, at least one secretary finding an an astonishingly inappropriate way to declare her love for her boss and one little guy from duplicating deciding tonight was the right night to tell his boss what he thought about him.

Good times.

I expect, at least with us, it's simply a matter of women finding their way into the throbbing halls of power. I don't recall any admonishments concerning behavior, but once the ratio of female partners crossed a certain tipping point it just didn't happen any more. They are supposed to civilize us, after all.

Posted by Sluggo | December 18, 2007 11:25 AM

Let's face it, with all the social engineering being done in the workplace, don't we all want to get away from our co-workers at the end of the day? We can hardly stand each other, why party?

Posted by Brett | December 18, 2007 11:38 AM

As the workplace consumes more of our personal time, I am surely not the only worker who does not consider it fun or holiday-spirited to spend still more time with the people from the office.

Posted by cordelia | December 18, 2007 11:39 AM

The last great company Christmas Party I attended was one I threw in the mid-1990's. I took everyone (about 30 employees) to Lake Tahoe, fed 'em well, and put 'em up in a good hotel. The only thing they had to do was show up for the group dinner and pay for their own gambling. I wrote the whole thing off with corporate as a sales meeting. And yes, the best looking woman in the entire group spent the night in my room. I enjoyed her very much. Those were the days. Every word of the above is 100% true.

Posted by Whippinwil | December 18, 2007 11:47 AM

A top partner in my girlfriend's firm took a bunch of new guys to a fairly generic strip club and took hell for it, but only symbolically, enough that he wouldn't do it again. Partners in law firms, ironically, are less likely to get sued than a typical CEO, because they are uh...top notch *lawyers*. But what I've noticed is that instead of my being invited to off premise drunken gatherings, now it's just her and a small group of same-sex friends who party every few weeks. Now she's a lawyer at Google, and I have not heard of any parties coming up. They work in a fairly open space, and she says the computer guys "engineers" are stereotypically shy dudes who rarely mingle. They *do* have some of the best food I've ever had, just for lunch or early dinner, and are encouraged to take leftovers home, so we're both suddenly in the money as far as sober pampering goes. But unlike the old lawfirms, she has not made any party friends there. Part of that is age. She still hangs out with all the girls she met the same year as she graduated and got a lawyer job.

Posted by Nik from NYC | December 18, 2007 12:13 PM

I worked as a NYC employee. Each year a party would be organized by a co-worker, off premises and paid for by attendees. Yet this was still considered work related. Several years back one attendee wrote a letter to the powers that be. Apparently this individual was offended because she witnessed a married man kissing someone other than his wife and a womans backside being caressed during a dance. Despite the fact the letter writer was not involved in any of the incidents she found them to be inappropriate. As a result approximately 25 people were called in and questioned extensively regarding their own and others actions that evening. Needless to say Christmas party attendance fell off rather sharply after that.

Posted by Cacimbo | December 18, 2007 12:43 PM

'general cultural change. When my father's friend was in drivers ed in college circa 1960, they advised him "if you have more than a six pack, call a cab." Quite a distance from today's 0.08 drunk driver laws.' Posted by Rix

Actually, for a large man and American beer, a six pack over two hours results in about 0.08 BAC.

Posted by Njorl | December 18, 2007 1:04 PM

Actually, for a large man and American beer, a six pack over two hours results in about 0.08 BAC.

Phrased another way, for 3.2% beer a six-pack is equivalent to about 1.5 drinks, and the drinker must consume 72 ounces of liquid to obtain it, which will result in serious peeing in the not-too-distant future and consequent expulsion of some of the alcohol.

For a more traditional 5% beer, a six-pack is equivalent to somewhere in the range of 2.5-3 drinks. Still 72 ounces of liquid, but the concentration accumulates faster. A large male with normal tolerance could handle it, however.

Posted by anony-mouse | December 18, 2007 2:02 PM

JB:
Excellent reference to the Nakatomi Tower. I always wanted to buy a Christmas card that read "Now I've got a machine gun. Ho. Ho. Ho."

Posted by Jim | December 18, 2007 3:31 PM

Trading Places with Eddie Murphy and Dan Akroyd.

By the way, if our culture is phasing out the drunk office Christmas party, I'm going to celebrate.

Perhaps there is hope for American culture after all.

Posted by Paul A' Barge | December 18, 2007 3:50 PM

Ancedote from the engineering field (big company then and now)...

Over the decade I've been working for my current company, I've witnessed our Christmas party go from a huge, spare-no-expenses, glitzy extravaganza in an exclusively rented swanky downtown hotel, to a party in a bar down the street where they give everyone 2 drink tickets, to a pep talk in the cafeteria, to the last couple years where they didn't even bother sending an email wishing happy 'holidays'.

Some co-workers do get together unofficially but don't tell management or HR!

For good or ill, the sterile, sanitized workplace is here to stay--but yes, it was more fun back in the day...

Posted by b | December 18, 2007 4:50 PM

Video killed the office Christmas party

See here for an example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISg3P6AnLhQ

It is hard to let it blow over when people are so stupid they say things on video.

Posted by JKB | December 18, 2007 5:56 PM

'Video killed the office Christmas party' -- JKB

Video (and the Internet) are killing more than that, the ubiquity of recording technology, and the ease with which _any_ digitized recording can be disseminated around the planet, creates an entire new situation.

In the old days you could do something stupid or silly and unless you ran for Congress or something, odds are only family and friends and personal acquaintances would know about it or care 20 years later.

Today, that no longer applies. The new technology creates a necessity, especially for younger people who haven't established themselves yet, that can be summed up as: "Don't screw up, not even once!"

In the old days, if you got drunk and went streaking and somebody snapped a photo, it usually wasn't more than an embarassment. Today, it may well find its way all over the planet before you get sober the next day, _including to the Google search current or future employers may do on you_.

Or poential girlfriends/boyfriends. Or your parents. Or your in-laws. Etc.

Ditto blog postings, taking part in political action, etc. A trail of inescapable digital data follows us around like a cometary tail, and that changes things.

Posted by HC | December 18, 2007 9:42 PM

Several things contribute to the lack of office parties at my job.

First, it is company policy that workers be as sensitive (read: childish) as humanly possible. Alcohol doesn't make for HR-friendly conversations. And for those who enjoy some grown-up humor and conversation with - oh God! - curse words, doing it around co-workers simply isn't the place. When a company can fire you for uttering a curse word, partying with co-workers is career kryptonite.

Time off is a luxury for people in my field and at least a rarity in most American workplaces. When I work 50+ hours a week - weekends included - I look for each and every opportunity to *not* be at work. Hey, thanks but no thanks for the invite to the office party. I see enough of you people as is.

I get together with friends from work for drinks occasionally, but they're friends first and co-workers second. I just don't feel comfortable having a good time with *all* my co-workers. I'm too busy keeping my job to be happy at work.

Posted by Jeff R. | December 18, 2007 10:03 PM

The best Christmas parties I ever attended were when I was a waitress at a country club. Everyone, even us teenagers, got hammered on the open clubhouse bar. There was karaoke, dancing, smokey games of poker, Secret Santa disbursals and general debauchery.

When at VDOT we had Christmas parties on a department by department basis. Since mine had only 5 employees, it was a nice dinner party with the spouses held at one co-worker's home. Just before the guys with kids left, the hostess asked my husband and me solicitously, "You two are going to stay and hang out, right?" At first we were freaked out, wondering if she and her husband were trying to have group sex. Then a couple of their redneck friends showed up, and we all proceeded to get very drunk and play Trivial Pursuit, which is actually pretty easy when playing against drunken rednecks.

When I worked for a company that was Muslim-owned, the company holiday parties were dry. Which meant that people came, ate the food, and dipped out as soon as they could. Those of us under 30 then went off to someone's house for the after-party in which the real drunken revelry took place.

This year, my company, a home builder, replaced the annual Christmas party, traditionally an evening of dinner and dancing at a local country club, with an afternoon of bowling at the end of our fiscal year. No alcohol was served by the company, but they didn't prohibit people from buying their own. Attendance was mandatory, but no one stayed long. I was home by 3 pm.

Posted by Christina | December 19, 2007 2:14 PM

In cities other than big cities with public transportation, I have to think that the length of the average commute has had a hand in killing all the lamented passings above: happy hours, after-work outings and holiday parties. If it takes you over an hour to transport yourself between work and home, you don't want to hang around at work longer... and this probably goes double for workers with families at home whom they actually like to see.

Posted by CJS | December 19, 2007 4:07 PM