I find that brutal honesty is the best way to go. Almost no-one recognises it for what it is.
Whenever I’m hassled about why I choose not to attend my work Christmas do, I smile politely and tell the inquirant that “they pay me to pretend to be your friend until 4:30, five days a week. I don’t feel the need to do it for free on my own time.”
So far, in the last eight years, only one person has worked out that I’m not joking.
Yesterday was my workplace’s Christmas (not “Holiday”) luncheon. There was food, a free totebag for each employee, and one of the clerks played Christmas carols on his Casio. I remembered last year when I just sat there eating and nobody talked to me. So this year I got my food and gift, wished the people there a merry Christmas, and went upstairs to eat my food in the kitchen, where the two other people there didn’t talk to me. And later, my coworkers who stayed downstairs were concerned that I didn’t stay and eat with them. I told them I wasn’t feeling very festive at the time. Still don’t. At least they didn’t ask me to sing.
I’m an atheist, but it’s become tradition at my army unit for me to sing one a capella song at the annual Christmas dinner. So far, it’s been:
I’ll Be Seeing you
The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire)
Le Divin Enfant
Night and Day and, most recently,
Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas
…and I’m sure I’m forgetting one. I’m leaning toward Ode to Joy for next year, in German, or Let it Snow, but I might just go for some more Cole Porter, if anyone has any suggestions of songs that don’t rely on instrumental cues.
In other words; lighten up, prr.
Here’s an idea: sing terribly. I mean, hideously out of tune croaking. They will never ask you to sing again.
When I’m effectively forced to sing ANYTHING, but especially Christmas songs, I choose “Jingle Bells”. By the dogs. Thus:
Arf arf arf
Arf arf arf
Arf arf arf arf arf
That’s usually all it takes. My torturer usually gets kind of a glazed look (sometimes it takes two verses), allowing me to drift off to the punchbowl barking quietly to myself.
I’m so glad my co-workers are almost all Hindus. No one makes me sing Diwali carols, ever.
Go up on Twisted Tunes and learn all the words to their parody of “Walking in a Winter Wonderland” called “Walking 'Round in Women’s Underwear”. Next time you’re asked for your favorite Christmas song, belt it out. I guarantee you’ll never be asked again.
I speak from experience.
It’s funny how I have to twist myself up into a pretzel to disguise my discomfort at these things, and you guys give me all these great ideas for making myself into an obnoxious prick by warbling off-key, singing travesties of their idiotic sacred songs, etc. and somehow I catch grief from religious posters claiming that I’m behaving badly at these parties. Considering how much I resent attending these things, I’m doing everything except actively learning the words, and singing along, and no one IRL can tell how distasteful I find these religious office parties, yet this is somehow offensive. I don’t get it at all.
PRR, I’m with you on hating Christmas. I’m with you on hating parties with the xmas theme. I’m with you on Xmas music. Even though, truly, a lot of what I hear is just winter-themed, I don’t like it either. I hate winter. I hate cold. I hate snow. (What sadist came up with “May all your Xmases be white” anyway?)
Back to the music. It wouldn’t be so bad if an occasional classic appeared among the normal background music, but no, once it’s the season, it’s all holiday music, all the time. I have only been saved by the fact that, occasionally, some of the so-called holiday music is something I actually like (Vince Guaraldi playing “Linus & Lucy”). In fact, I have instructed people in family to ask me, if I’m ever tempted to work as a seasonal retail employee ever again: What are you doing New Years? (This is the song that has earned my unmitigated hostility this year. It’s a really, really awful song, even worse than Holly Jolly Jesus Christ in a Christmas Stocking).
(Side note: Could I hibernate? Go t?o sleep following a nice Thanksgiving meal and wake up in…April? That would be so pleasant.)
The solution, PRR, is twofold. (1) Drink more. (2) Sing them that horrible little tuneless Dreidl song. After you’re drunk, I mean. Or one of the many thousands of songs that has no reference to the baby Jesus (hint: Santa). Actually “Deck the Halls” is a good one–not a word about Christmas, Jesus, or anything but being merry–it’s a Yule song. Extra benefit: Contains the line “Don we now our gay apparel” along with lots of easy to sing and memorize “falalalalas.”
ETA: Walking Round in Women’s Underwear is another good choice.
Well, you know, you worsen the case for your own reasonableness when you ask rhetorically how other people would like being forced to engage in coprophagia, urolagnia and fish-fucking, with the implication that this is in some way equivalent to having to pipe along to In The Bleak Midwinter (a time of year when it’s pretty universally accepted that Christ wasn’t born).
I suppose I could have just written “engaged in foul and unspeakable practices that any sane person would consider disgusting,” in stead of spelling them out like that, but people might have imagined I was suggeting they do something truly distasteful.
HNS: I once wrote a novel featuring a minor character, a transvestite whom I named “Don Wenow,” that puzzled John Barth when he read it on the page. But when he asked me out loud (this was in a seminar) what kind of a name was “Don Wenow,” you could see the light bulb going off over his head as he said it.
I don’t drink, btw. I mean, I do–I have a drink three or four times a year, but never at work during the day. Maybe I should start boozing more.
That’s good. Too good.
I don’t think you’d be so cavalier if, for example, your job somehow depended on you going to their celebration and eating Benji.
One more question. You’re watching a stage play. A banquet is in progress. The guests are enjoying an appetizer of raw oysters. The entree consists of boiled dog.
Yeah, I’ll tell you about my mother…
When I used to teach elementary school many years ago, and being the token Gay person on a staff of about 20 straight, married, often pregnant women, I had to suffer through baby showers and “wedding celebrations” in the staff room constantly… And not only suffer through them, I was expected to make “donations” - wherein one of the staff would walk around the school and tell people how much they were expected to give - usually around $20 each… But sometimes up to $40 - depending how “popular” the teacher was.
After being hit up for about the thirteenth time, and sitting in a room with a teacher almost yelling, “Gimme my stuff! What did you get me?”, I decided enough was enough… The next time the “Donation cop” came by to try to force me to give money for a “Celebration” for some teacher who couldn’t even be bothered to say hello when she passed me in the halls, I told her until I was allowed to get married, I would no longer be donating at work… If I wanted to give something to someone I cared about or was friends with, I would buy a gift myself.
The look on her face was priceless… She mumbled something like “Oh, OK, that’s understandable”… and I was never bothered again… and I think I actually was respected more after that - or maybe I just respected myself more. 
It’s not the spelling it out that’s the issue, Professor. It’s the fact that to try to make your case at all, you have to liken “being in the same room as Christmas carol singing” to “foul and unspeakable practices that any sane person would consider disgusting”. And still you try to present yourself as a beacon of tolerance and reasonableness?
This. Forget all the passive aggressive crap. Just zonk out.