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Celtic Christmas

(December 2014)

Traditionally Christmas is a festival for all the family. Father is asleep in the chair after a hard year in work, the perfect kids are playing with beautiful wooden toys in front of a burning log fire decked with stockings and mistletoe, while Mother sings as she prepares mince pies and warm milk in the kitchen. It's all so perfect

But what happens when big businesses try to impart this festive mirth onto their employees? How well does the wholesome family Christmas translate into the business world, in this modern age of team building, worker morale and general gung-ho strategies for cohesion?

Company executives want to foster a type of family atmosphere in the workplace year round but it is most tangible at Christmas. Why do some bosses seek to blur the lines between family and work? Maybe it's because people generally don't like to let their families down, so if they consider their colleagues as family and their workplace as another kind of home then they will work harder for longer hours instead of being at their real home with their real kids

Christmas is no longer just a time for the family. There is an ever growing list of criteria required to full fill one's festive calendar. Top of the list on the road to social equilibrium is the equally loathed and adored office Christmas party. Play your cards right and you could significantly elevate your career trajectory by getting friendly with the right people when their defences are down ... get it wrong and you'll end up the talk of the office for the rest of the year and your drunken antics will be stored with the tinsel and paper snowflakes, to be brought out and strung up around the office year after year after year

The office Christmas party can take many forms. Some companies put £100 behind the bar at the local boozer and tell their workers to have at it regardless of the consequence. Some companies save money on hiring a fancy venue by drinking and socialising in the office itself, regardless of the consequences for the photocopier. But what happens when £100 behind the bar and a warm photocopy of your counterpart's bum cheeks isn't enough? What happens when your company is earning big money and a trip to the local pub seems disingenuous?

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a wealthy business owner in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a MASSIVE Christmas party

This is the time of year when the sheer amount of floor space available in the ball rooms and conference centres of big hotels becomes an invaluable commodity for businesses looking to show their employees a lavish good time

The Celtic Manor Resort in Newport is home to the only 5 star hotel in Wales. The Ryder Cup played their 2010 international tournament here. NATO held a global summit for world leaders here, so if you're a local business keen to surround your humble workers with glitter and festive opulence, then The Celtic Manor is the ideal location. The building is a fortress of wealth and fortune. It is a towering citadel for the prestigious elite. If you tell your neighbour that your office Christmas party is being held at The Celtic Manor then they'll know that the company you work for is doing well, or that the company you work for has got a damn good accountant

The Caernarfon Suite is 1200 square metres of polished wood, thick carpets and chandeliers that would make any admin worker feel like the Queen. The people due to attend these functions offer their employers a 5 star service year round, so they deserve their 5 star meal at Christmas ... and £5 pints of generic larger at the bar. When guests arrive here they want to be treated like royalty. That's what they've worked and paid their money for after all

I'm here to play music for these good people. They are greeted with a champagne reception, they sit down to a three course meal, then they dance and drink until they've had enough of their colleagues and Christmas in general, or until they've had enough of being conscious, then they all get into taxis and go home ... or they're put into a taxi and told to go home. It's usually one or the other

Musicians and sound engineers are usually contracted to set up their gear long before the guests arrive. We turn up, we set up, then we wait ... we wait for hours

I've worked in the restaurant business on and off since I was 16. I like to think I know what's going on, but to mount a three course meal for 500 people in one room, plus drinks and entertainment is a nothing short of a military operation. I have plenty of time to kill before we go onstage, so I watch them, like a bored overweight 31 year old hawk

Swarms of hotel staff have been busy setting up this huge room hours before the first guests are to arrive. The managers and supervisors all wear different colour uniforms to separate themselves from their subservient army of worker drones, dressed in beige tunics. These drones are the unsung heroes of Christmas. The bosses of the hotel are acutely aware, just like Santa Claus himself, that there wouldn't be any Christmas celebrations without an army of low-paid workers

Some of the people rushing around setting up the tables are young kids from the local community working their first jobs, some of them are members of the hard working immigrant community that more and more of our politicians would have the British public chase out of town with burning torches and pitch forks. Whatever their background, these workers are making an awful lot of people feel good this Christmas, as they hurry through the cluttered hallways that warren the underbelly of this hotel, rushed off their feet by the demands of their superiors, and the people they serve.

Setting up a function room is only the beginning of their shift. Once every table, chair, wine glass and side plate is in place, the huge doors open wide and the throng of festive jollity starts to echo about the building. Every knife, fork and napkin has been placed on the tables by hand, and as the guests start to pull their crackers and launch party poppers into the air it doesn't seem to matter that every streamer and bit of brightly coloured plastic that falls to the floor has to be picked up later and put in a bin ... by hand

Christmas is a beautiful time of year, and The Celtic Manor is a beautiful hotel. The guests deserve their communal celebrations. These people work damn hard. The bosses and hotel owners deserve their vast wealth because hotels like this don't come cheap. I'm sure that most of the workers are grateful to have their jobs, but to an outsider looking at the service objectively - the workers seem to have the thin end of the wedge as far as Christmas spirit is concerned

But what was I expecting? I guess I was struck by the stark juxtaposition of opulence and practicality. The huge room, with its chandeliers and wood panelling is bordered by grey corridors scuffed by trolleys, and piled high with industrial sized boxes of Christmas crackers. The theatricality of Christmas here is amusing and overwhelming. One side of the curtain is all extravagance and excess, while the other is cold and utilitarian. It's the Theatre of Celebration

The people serving the drinks can never expect to get as drunk as the people drinking them! And after all, the servant/master dynamic only really exists in that specific space and time

I approach a young man in a beige tunic. He has dark hair on his head and braces on his teeth. I ask him if it ever gets him down that all of the people out front are having a good old Christmas knees-up, while he's out the back sorting through cutlery. He looks at me with his youthful innocence and awful pre-moustache, as if it's never occurred to him to question the roles we play in society or shave every day until his facial hair is good and ready. He laughs a little bit, then answers

"Nah ... not really"

A voice in my head whispers "you'll learn" as I recount my first job, doing pretty much what he's doing, but in a 3 star hotel. Teenage apathy is bliss

I approach a female member of staff dressed in a grey shirt with a red knee length apron, I ask her if she'll be finishing her shift soon ... I instantly regret potentially sounding like some kind of drunken punter intent on seducing a member of staff, but she takes it with the deadpan practicality it was intended and tells me she only has an hour left. I briefly consider trying to turn it into a chat up line after all ... then I point at the aftermath of the party, the vast sierra of spilled wine and abandoned party hats stretched out before us

"Someone has to pick all that up"

I say with hopeless futility

"It's not so bad for me, I just have to take the glasses to the bar then I can go home"

Knowing that someone else has it worse than you can help make some things feel better

Big up to the workers

Merry Christmas everyone