Thursday, December 22, 2005

Christmas parties, why just once a year?

Tis the season . . . for Christmas parties. We had ours this past Monday night. A nice little affair. Trays of those fancy tiny snack things. A lot of us wore Hawaiian shirts (I own a dozen) and leis in spite of an outside temperature of 100 below zero. Alas, I couldn't hang around long. Having a long trip home, I sucked down my two free drinks, got to know a couple of my colleagues a little bit better and headed west.

Then, on a city bus heading for a park and ride, I heard about a REAL Christmast party. Turns out the guy sitting in the seat behind me had a terminal case of cellphoneitis. By the time I stepped off the bus, a trip of about 20 minutes, I knew more about this guy than I did about some of my in-laws. In fact, everybody on the bus, which was about half full, found out more about this character than they really wanted to know.

But the good stuff involved his company's Christmas party, held that afternoon. As he told it, he and a group of co-workers chipped in a total of $210, which they offered to a colleague if he would eat a "a case" of chocolate, or as he described it, "about 90 little bottles of chocolate" that the office staff had received as a gift from a client.

It seems the chocolate lover got about two thirds through the case, or about 60 "little bottles of chocolate" before . . . well, you can guess the rest. It wasn't pretty, and I'm talking about the bus guy's description of the event.

What is it about Christmas parties that prompts us to do these things? — Ron Hall

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