In keeping with holiday reflection, we head back to Dec. 12, 1974, when the Trail Daily Times ran a story by famed AP journalist Hal Boyle, a Pulitzer Prize winner, who lamented the demise of the office party.
Please enjoy this piece, certainly a sign of the times in which it was written.
Not surprisingly, the archival collection lacks photographic evidence that such shenanigans occurred here, but here we present a photo of a 1906 CM&S bunkhouse party in Tadanac.
It looks innocent enough!
The office Christmas party today is in about the same plight as the whooping crane.
It isn’t extinct – but it’s in danger of becoming so.
Many young people aged 25 to 30 have never seen a real old-fashioned office Christmas party.
“What were they really like?” they ask curiously about this time of year. “Were they really as wild as the old timers say they were?”
That depends.
The memories of the survivors of the office Christmas parties are as undependable as those of the veterans of any other war, and a tendency to gory up the picture develops as the years pass.
Actually, in the old days (say a quarter of a century ago) many office Christmas parties were so sedate that not a single member of the staff wound up with a black eye or broken bone.
You might not even have had to call the cops.
But the classic, old-fashioned office Christmas celebration – at least as it is fondly recalled by many – was somewhere in between a Roman orgy and the attack on the Bastille.
HIGH TIME
Some, or all, of the following events might happen:
Somebody fulfilled the dream of a lifetime and put gin in the office water cooler. At least 15 employees went up to the boss and told him what they really thought of him – and the boss made a mental note to start the new year by giving 15 merit decreases in pay.
In attempts to break up one fist fight, four more would start. The big game was to play catch with the office Christmas tree. Six middle-aged married men suffered ankle sprains chasing the girls from the stenographic pool from desktop to desktop. The guy who won at hand wrestling got to kiss the prettiest secretary as a reward.
By 10 p.m. – the party was supposed to end by 7 o’clock – the place looked as if it had been hit by a hurricane, and the office boy was sent out for four more bottles. By midnight, the boss was wearing mistletoe in his hair, had his arm around the janitor and was promoting him to executive assistant.
At least five husbands didn’t get home until Christmas morning. One fellow had to be dissuaded from trying to cool off by hanging from the windowsill by his fingertips.
FAR AFIELD
Another fellow wouldn’t be heard of until the third of January. Then a telegram would arrive from Montreal or Rio de Janeiro saying: “Where am I? Please send money.”
The question arises as to why these annual staff frolics have practically died out in most business firms.
Some say it was because of the objections made by wives. Some say it was because of a growing tendency by employees to file suits against management for injuries and other mishaps suffered at the parties or on the way home afterward. But others find a simpler explanation for the doom of the old-fashioned office Christmas party. The younger generation just doesn’t have the stamina to endure them, and the older generation doesn’t have the strength left to enjoy them properly.
Does this ring true for you? Don’t fret – we won’t ask for any details this week!
Sarah Benson-Lord is manager of the Trail Museum and Archives and Visitors Centre, both located in the Riverfront Centre.
