If You Haven't Sent Out Your Holiday Party Invite Yet, Don't Bother!

By Bobby Finger  |  November 29, 2016 | 5:55pm
Latest

Folks, it’s holiday party season, that simultaneously wonderful and regrettable time of year where people of all creeds come together to worship their true gods: free booze, bad sweaters, and Mariah Carey’s secular classic, “All I Want For Christmas Is You.” While office parties, if you’re lucky enough to have them, generally occur on Fridays (if your bosses are chill) or Thursdays (if your bosses are nerds), the real ones—by which I mean the ones where you don’t live in fear of coworkers hearing you scream things like, “I FUCKING LOVE AMY GRANT’S CHRISTMAS ALBUMS”—occur on Saturdays, which, for the M-F workers among us, are objectively the only good days to throw them.

Though there are several pros to throwing a holiday party (chief among them being the potential for impressing your friends with themed decor, drinks, and snacks), the yearly supply almost always outweighs demand, and you risk poor turnout if your invitation arrives even one day after everyone else’s. After all, there are generally only two good Saturdays for throwing them. Allow me to explain with this year’s calendar.

The first Saturday of this December, 12/3, is too soon after Thanksgiving for guests to fully transition into their holiday-ready selves. Last week, with its exhausting travel and family time, was hectic, and everyone needs a weekend off to unwind. 12/24 is too close to Christmas, which means large chunks of your guest list will have plans to be with family. 12/31 is New Year’s Eve, which is an entirely different beast altogether.

Additionally, the colder it is outside (as long as it’s not too dangerous to travel), the more enjoyable a holiday party is—so waiting at least one more week should allow for a significant enough temperature drop to make a steamy apartment all the more appealing.

This leaves 12/10 and 12/17 as the only good days to get nativity star lit.

With that much demand in that small of a window, I hate to break it to you… but if you haven’t sent out an invite, your friends have already made plans. So either choose to attend one (or more) of the parties you’ve no doubt already been invited to, or risk spending one of the best Saturdays of the year drinking your homemade eggnog alone, with no one around to compliment the Fixer Upper-branded “SHIPLAP” holiday sweater you bought online specifically for the occasion.

Sorry.

 
Join the discussion...