My Last Company Christmas Party

Over the past 42 years we’ve attended our share of office Christmas parties. At least, they used to be called “Christmas parties.” These days, in keeping with political correctness, we are invited to “holiday parties.”

A number of these parties we felt obliged to attend. A few were downright uncomfortable for us. I think of one, in particular, where the goal of a great number of the party-ers was to drink themselves into oblivion, passing through several other states on their way there, including the wearing-of-the-lampshade state. Others have been tedious, with speech after speech; award after award; power-point presentation after power-point presentation.

To be fair, there were also some memorably fun company parties; those at George Fox University come to mind. Nice folks, interesting talk, good food, no booze, and . . . they called them “Christmas parties!"

We went to Dan’s company party last Friday night. It was a catered dinner, held at the Balloon Fiesta Museum. (That was the party where I kept coming up short on silverware for the next course - but that's another (embarrassing) story.)

This afternoon I went to my office party, which was at the National Hispanic Cultural Center. This was my LAST company Christmas party! It was nice. The setting was pretty. I only had my cell phone, so the picture, above, isn't that good, but you can tell that it had a nice, warm, inviting feeling and was decorated beautifully. Great food, too.

At the end of the festivities, they announced (as is the custom at almost all of these parties) that anyone who found a red sticker-dot on the underside of their chair could take home one of the poinsettias. I looked, and saw a sticker. I tried to peel it off, but it was adhered solidly to the manufacturer's label on my chair. Finally I was able to tear off about two-thirds of the sticker, only to find, once it was out in better light, that it wasn't red at all, but orange! It must have been left there from some Halloween party where they played the same game. The emcees felt sorry for me, I guess, because they let me turn in my shred of an orange sticker for a poinsettia. "It's close enough to red," they declared.


That was nice. Since we won't be here for Christmas, and since all of my decorations are already moved to Temple, I haven't bothered to decorate for the season. Now, we have, at least, a nice splash of Christmas red!