Five important tips to make your Christmas party perfect ...

USUALLY the best Christmas parties are those that skilfully merge a number of key fundamentals that range from good atmosphere, food, music and decorum. Getting this mix right will ensure everyone has a great time and the evening passes off in spectacular fashion. Here’s a short (if slightly churlish) guide to the five most important tips when it comes to staging your party.

1. Atmosphere: If it’s one thing a Christmas party needs more than anything else, it’s to know that it’s actually Christmas time. This might sound pretty straight forward but getting the atmosphere right can be the difference between a proper Christmas party and a regular Saturday night down the pub. Most establishments that cater for Christmas parties are now putting up the tinsel earlier each year to help make parties more special. So why not check out in advance the best decorated establishments in your town, village or city? Getting the atmosphere spot on is essential for any Christmas party and you want your chosen location to make an effort.

2. Food: Whether it is chips, sausage rolls or a five star gala dinner, knowing what kind of food is on offer beforehand can really help. Having a meal will naturally slow the pace of the evening’s drinking down (or at least it should) and can have many positive benefits as the night progresses. Whereas finger food, or a lighter assortment of food, is usually insufficient in terms of bolstering your reserves ahead of a night’s drinking. Be mindful of the range of food available at your party and drink accordingly. Fact.

3. Music: It really doesn’t matter how much you love Christmas, hearing Cliff Richard’s ‘Mistletoe and Wine’ for the 87th time on a night out just isn’t recommended. Don’t get me wrong, Christmas songs make an important contribution to any Christmas party but just be mindful of the lethargy that usually sets in around 12am when the songs of Christmas past continue to play again and again and again. Why not make music part of your pre-party plan and arrange for something different to be played after a certain hour? Who knows, you might even notice.

4. Diplomacy: Okay, so it’s only a Christmas party you say? Well, Christmas parties sometimes require a level of strategic diplomacy that would leave the UN in awe. Let’s face it, heading back to work in early January after a luxurious Christmas spent feasting and relaxing is difficult enough besides having to assess (and re-assess) the happenings of a Christmas party that happened two-weeks ago over and over in your head. So no matter how tempting it might be to get those work place tensions off your chest; keep in mind that seven glasses of wine while waiting for a taxi at 2am in the freezing cold is no place to commence conversation on the finer points of the work place and the colleagues you share it with. Pass on this information to all colleagues beforehand.

5. Selfies: This is a pretty new problem that has started to invade every aspect of life in recent years and will usually cause much ire for people at Christmas parties. The age of the ‘Selfie’ has well and truly arrived and has managed to banish spontaneity forever. But that’s no reason why you still shouldn’t be able to enjoy a Christmas party in relative obscurity with colleagues and friends. Selfie culprits, for the most part, are well intentioned folk, but snapping a zillion photos of a Christmas party with folks in all manner of uncompromising states of appearance is, perhaps, I guess, okay. But posting them immediately online certainly is not. So go easy with the iPhone during this year’s party. You wouldn’t know who was watching.