Farewell to Office Christmas Parties

Simon Doonan astutely writes in The Observer today what you always knew to be true: office holiday parties “totally sucked.” He extols the virtues of the debauched soirees of yesteryear: “Drugs, venereal disease, fistfights, unwanted pregnancies—now those were holiday parties!” It’s not Christmas until the office loser, the one with the “pudgiest, whitest body,” inevitably inflicts his nakedness upon his colleagues. Doonan claims that in recent years sober people were to blame for the relatively tame events—the “death of fun,” if you will—and that the annual occasion was long dead before the economy (thankfully) axed most this year. But what about your coworkers destined to drink alone?