Good morning, happy Friday, and Merry Christmas! That’s right, today is officially our office Christmas party! I hope you’re ready for fun, presents, drama, and a few helpful tips for your own office party!
First things first, no holiday celebration would be complete without the proper decorations! Wall decorations like those cardboard pictures or garlands are very simple and easy to put up, and are very cubicle friendly. But if you want big ticket, you’ve got to go with a full tree and Michael Scott always likes to go all the way. He and Dwight went out and got us a real Christmas tree to be decorated with all the trimmings. I will advise that if you choose to get a tree, take the time to go over measurements otherwise you will end up like Michael and get a tree that is far too tall for our ceiling. Thankfully, Kevin was there with a paper cutter to hack off the top of the tree. Always the optimist, Michael points out that this perfectly good mini tree can be sold to charity, since “that’s what Christmas is all about.”
Given this is perhaps the biggest party of the year, you would be crazy to think that this wasn’t the top priority for the Party Planning Committee (PPC). Angela is leaving no room for error and has even recruited extra office staff to be part of the committee, like Ryan. He seems to think she is overreacting a bit given that she had sent a memo about needing to “prepare for every possible disaster” and I think this simply proves why Ryan isn’t a routine member of the team. When I am responsible for a party, I am much more like Angela and tend to have contingency plans for various problems I could see happening. Food-related issues are the biggest ones such as perhaps something is ruined or else there isn’t enough to go around because we get more partygoers than anticipated. With food at an office there are a few standard options: you can go out to eat at a restaurant, have it catered, or you can do potluck. Prior to Covid and going remote, my office would do potluck style events where we would sign up with what dish we were bringing. By doing it this way, you can ensure you have variety of different dishes so you do not have twenty desserts with no proper meal or else three different potato salads. That being said, where Angela and I differ is my controlling tendencies typically result in me wanting to handle the entire event without letting others help too much. But by doing it that way, I do not need to worry about Phyllis getting the wrong lights for the tree or dealing Pam just watching me struggle with a table cloth.
The big kahuna of the party, as is common at most offices, is Secret Santa! This means each person was assigned a colleague to purchase a secret present for and we get to go around opening each present. While fun, I will admit the worse part of Secret Santa is having everyone stare at you while you open your gift so you better have you happy face. Well, the office’s Secret Santa gets off to a decent start but it does get thrown off when it is revealed that Michael decided to buy Ryan a video iPod. It’s outrageous because there was a $20 limit to the event; a piece of advise, if there is a price limit you should stick to it. Well, Michael got a homemade oven mitt from Phyllis and he really started to lose it because evidently he felt his gift should have been as good as an iPod. He decides to change Secret Santa to Yankee Swap; this isn’t a great change because Secret Santa means the gifts are for specific people, while Yankee Swap is meant to use non-specific gifts in which people try to gun for specific ones. Before long everyone is fighting over the iPod, few people get their intended gifts, and Phyllis has left due to Michael’s horribly insensitive comments about the gift. To run salt in the wound, we find out that Michael choose to disregard the $20 limit because he got a big bonus for having fired Devin on Halloween so he wanted to celebrate. That sort of put a damper on what little cheer there was to the party with everyone dispersing through the office, very few having ended up with their intended gift.
Just when I feel like everyone is going to start leaving, Michael returns from having ran to a liquor store and now has an excessive amount of vodka to ease the tension and cheer everyone up. Somehow, it really did work and before long we had music going, shots were being knocked back, and even some of the gifts found their way to their original recipients. I was surprise that Pam traded away the iPod but she certainly seemed happy with her teapot. I did check with Phyllis and once her boyfriend got there she was in much better spirits. He actually works in the building, it’s Bob Vance of Vance Refrigeration. I do feel about for Angela, though. She had put so much work into the party and she just looked miserable almost the entire night, and then disappeared at one point. Either way, this party did seem to work out in the end. But that is the beauty of the office party; they always seem to end up pretty decent.
So going back to the Secret Santa, when in doubt try to stick with something practical that they can find some use for. But if you are in charge of the office party, do not feel obligated to do a party the same way and that includes Secret Santa. What my team did this year was choose to go to a restaurant, play some Christmas-themed games, and instead of exchanging gifts we all donated to our company gift drive. Simple but really did work out great; holiday parties do not need fit a cookie cutter mold so feel free to get creative. As for the gifts the office saw, they were all:
Jim -> Pam: Teapot (Good gift, perhaps a few too many emotions alongside)
Michael -> Ryan: iPod (A pretty great gift, but was too far over the limit)
Kevin -> Kevin: Foot bath (Good gift, but he really should’ve drawn a new name)
Dwight -> Phyllis: Paintballs and lessons (Interesting, but maybe not geared toward Phyllis)
Toby -> Angela: Baby poster (Great gift, simple and exactly what she likes)
Phyllis -> Michael: Homemade oven mitt (Screw Michael, this is a great gift)
Stanley -> Kelly: Personalized name plate (Great gift, simple and practical)
Oscar -> Creed: Shamrock key chain (Totally phoned it in)
Creed -> Jim: Old shirt (If Oscar phoned it in, Creed didn’t even try)
Kelly -> Oscar: Shower radio (Should be great, but she got him the same thing last year)
Ryan -> Toby: Book of short stories (Good gift, again just very simple)
Pam -> Meredith: Drawing of the office (Handmade can be very cool)
Meredith -> Dwight: Shot glasses (Sort of generic gift but not terrible)
Angela -> Stanley: Picture frame (Even more generic but another practical gift)
I hope my opinions on these gifts help offer some perspective for when you do your own Secret Santa gift exchange! When in down, track down something simple and/or practical. Why not a cool mug with some hot beverage mixes to go along with it? Or snacks can always be a good gift like fancy chocolates or baked goods from a local bakery. Word of advice, make sure to try to get some intel on any allergens or food preferences they have. You do not want to the be one to offer cookies and bread to the person allergic to gluten so do try to double check! But Dunder Mifflin saw some pretty cool gifts, and some more interesting. Why don’t you message the comments section in what your gift of choice would have been? The iPod might be the obvious answer, but it wasn’t technically a proper gift. I’d have gone for the teapot, personally, even though it did also include the coworker with some unresolved feelings.
And that was our office Christmas party everyone! I hope that everyone was able to take away a little something from today. It could be the importance of adhering to the rules of Secret Santa, and remembering to at least try a little bit with your gifting. Maybe you picked up some tips on how to host an office party. Or maybe you were just reminded of Billy Zane’s famous words, “A real man makes his own luck.” Regardless, I hope you all have a safe and fun holiday season. And for those who were unsure about the rules of Secret Santa, I am including them as well as those for Yankee Swap down below. And as always, I’ll see you around the breakroom.
Secret Santa Rules
Secret Santa is a phrase that is known almost universally across the United States, and even internationally too. There are numerous stories which could be claimed to be the source of this event, but perhaps one of the most heartwarming is that of Larry Dean Stewart. He was an American businessman who would go out at Christmas time and hand out $100 bills to random people on the street or coordinate to have them mailed out to random people. Whether or not this was the defining origin of Secret Santa, it certainly provides an amazing story which reminds us this is intended to be the year of kindness and giving.
The rules of Secret Santa are actually pretty simple to follow. You first create your pool of participants; this would normally be a group of office colleagues, family, or friends. You next need to put the names together to then be sorted, with the key being each person should receive a name that is not their own. The standard method is slips of paper from a bowl or a hat, although I have used a Secret Santa website before. This was pretty handy, each person logs in to a designated group through the website and enters their phone number or email address. Once ready, you start the event and the system will randomly notify each person who their recipient is. Regardless, once you have your name you must then purchase a gift for that person, wrap it, and simply write the name of the recipient so it is left secret. It is important to note that the primary other rule associated is a spending limit (usually $20 or is chosen or perhaps you might have a rule where it must be handmade). It is important to note that if there are rules around the gift like a price limit, then please stick with the limit and there shouldn’t be any problem. Finally, the gifts are then exchanged at the designated party/event most often by having the gifts placed under a tree to ensure anonymity of the gift’s provider.
Yankee Swap Rules
Unlike variations of Secret Santa, Yankee Swap involves participants to buy a gift not intended for anyone in particular. When it comes to the rules of the gift, that is at the discretion of those putting the event together in regards to the price range. When it comes to Yankee Swap, the main goal should be practical or fun gift that not only will people be happy with, but perhaps they’ll fight over it. The gift should then be wrapped and left unmarked when bringing to the event.
When the game is ready to start, the order of the participants must be determined and there are a few means of doing so. One option is every participant is given a random number; alternatively, names can be pulled from a hat/bag and to determine who goes next. I have also seen variations in which a dice game is used in which each person takes turns rolling dice and looking for pairs (or whatever is determined ahead of time) but that does go into combining multiple games. Once it is determined who will be “first” they get to select which gift they want from the pile. Typically they do get a few seconds to look at the pile of gifts and select the one they want; when they do, they will then open and show off what the gift is. The next person in line gets to then select and open their own gift, and they can choose to either keep the gift or swap it for someone else’s. And this continues on until every one has a gift, and you are then left with the gift you got.
The rules our office did were a bit different, albeit we started after having already began. In fact, Michael’s variation is often the rules used for the White Elephant Game instead, so you can use that game as well. The first key difference is that the gifts are meant to be joke gifts, my no means something you would normally buy for yourself but hopefully will get a laugh. The term “While Elephant gift” actually has multiple legends behind where it came to be mean a joke gift. One version states that the name came into use after P. T. Barnum spent an exorbitant amount of time and money to secure a white elephant for his show. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a normal elephant that was painted over. The story I am most familiar with goes to the history of royalty being given elephants as gifts from royalty in other countries. With these elephants being difficult to care for, with an expensive upkeep, they become very poor gifts. Once the game is started, it begins with the first person opening and choosing their present. The next person then chooses to either steal someone’s present, or open an unopened present. Should someone’s gift be stolen, they then get to open a new gift or choose to steal the gift of someone else, and this is done until everyone has a gift.
