My christmas do ( a whole day thing and night ) was yesterday. I felt hideous as I'd checked come on, knackered ( iron deficient ), checked my bank balance which didn't convince me going on a pub crawl was a good idea either and decided I wasn't going. I had a lot of messages from people I'm not especially close to telling me I'll miss out etc and trying to convince me to come. Fwiw, I was going alone so wasn't letting anyone down with travel arrangements or anything and it was a pub crawl as a last minute plan with lots of people. Years ago and for about a decade now in this industry I'd have been peer pressured into going but think time I politely and firmly stuck to my guns. I didn't lie either, I told them I'd never missed one but this year I wasn't feeling great and wasn't up to it. I had a night in on my sofa whilst DH was on nights, watching Sabrina Carpenters christmas show with a whole camembert and the M&S garlic dough ball tree to myself in my pyjamas. Ny phone was on charge in the other room, my candles were lit and it was BLISS. Anyway, this morning I've had a coffee with the one person I'm closer to at work than others and it sounds like the do was an absolute shit show. I won't go into outing detail but I'm here to remind you that if you don't want to go to whatever festive day of forced fun your company has planned for you, you SO don't have to and you never know the next day you may be very glad you didn't! This also goes for spending elongated periods of time socialising with people you don't want to at Christmas in any other capacity.
Merry Christmas from corporate Scrooge ( formerly a people pleaser ) x