Julebord season

The Julebord season is upon us. Julebord is literally translated from Norwegian to English as ‘Christmas table’, but it simply means Christmas party at least in the way it is commonly used. Every year in Norway, starting in late November, employees start to prepare for their annual Christmas parties. And they are not few. Not only are there workplace Christmas parties, but also gutte-julebord or jente-julebord, Christmas parties for just men or women, respectively. And if you belong to any organization, e.g. a choir or a volunteer group, you can be sure that some type of party gets planned. Many of the people I know will attend anywhere from three to four Christmas parties before Christmas. For the most part, they take the form of sit-down dinners spread out over three to four hours, with a lot of food and a lot of alcohol (at least in the ‘old days’), interspersed with short speeches from company management or an organization’s leaders. They are fairly formal affairs; men and women dress to the nines, and most of the major chains of clothing stores advertise suits and dresses for the Julebord.

When I first started to work in Norway, the Christmas parties were often held on site at the workplace, in the hospital library or basement, where there was plenty of room to place a long dining table and chairs. Food was often catered by the hospital cafeteria, and alcohol was available for purchase. But the powers that be who arranged the parties often made their own aquavit from aquavit essence blended with absolute alcohol adjusted to a certain percentage. The alcohol was often ‘borrowed’ from the stock of absolute alcohol that the hospital kept under lock and key in each department. My guess is that the leaders ‘saw the other way’ when one or two bottles were removed from the stock, mostly because they also wished to enjoy the aquavit that was made from it. In later years the availability of alcohol was limited to one or two small bottles of wine with dinner; if you wanted more than that to drink you had to buy it yourself at the bar that was set up for the occasion, or bring it yourself. In any case, the flow of alcohol was never a problem at any of these parties. I have seen a lot of drunken people at Christmas parties here, including management and employees alike. In fact, I have been rather surprised at the number of drunken managers at these parties; it was almost as though they got a ‘free ticket’ out of prison and they made the most of it. I have experienced several of them in the ‘drunken edition’ over the years—unbelievably talkative, interested and cloying for that one night of the year, and eventually annoying. The other three hundred and sixty-four days they hardly knew you existed. You might be lucky if they smiled at you in the hallways when you met them during your workday. When they drank, they started to talk and unload about everything that was on their minds, and I thought to myself—I’m really not interested. Not interested in hearing about how your wife doesn’t understand you (classic), or how your workplace doesn’t understand you, or how you miss this or that in your life. Not my problem. After I went home at what I considered an appropriate hour (between midnight and 1am), the party was just getting started. People partied until dawn, and there was always a lot of whispering and loose talk about what went on afterwards. 

This all occurred in the mid-1990s; by the time we reached the year 2000 or so, our Christmas parties were often held at restaurants, with varying results. I can remember being stuffed into miniscule locales where you could barely stand up to go the ladies room or to go to the bar. I also remember one year (disastrous party) where we weren’t served food until close to 10 pm after having arrived at the restaurant at 7 pm. Not only were people raving drunk by 10 pm, but the food was served sporadically, which meant that some tables were finished with the first course while others were just being served it. I remember there was a guest scientist from the USA who was my table companion; at one point he turned to me and asked ‘When does the fun start?’ It kind of sums up about 70% of my Christmas party experiences in the twenty-two years I’ve been here. When does the fun start? He was right. Some of the parties have been stiflingly boring; I have a Norwegian colleague, a woman, and we more or less think alike about so many things. She and I have ‘livened’ up a few parties with our slightly anarchistic behavior. Do we regret it? No. What I can say is that our little corner of the table is often the liveliest—laughing, joking, pleasant conversation—all without a lot of alcohol. She has the same opinions as I do about public drunkenness. It is possible to have fun, even a lot of fun, without being piss-drunk. The Norwegians have a saying that they don’t trust people who don’t drink; I don’t trust people who do—especially the ones who never know when to stop. The few times when the parties have actually been fun were when they were held in large locales, like last year’s party. Food was served in one room (tapas table), which also had a formal bar where you could buy drinks or beer; the huge dining room was separate from this room and was at least comfortable to sit in. 

I have considered not going to Christmas parties at all, and some years I have dropped going to them. But the compromise now is that I leave at an appropriate time—more or less right after dinner--before the inevitable stupid behavior starts. In any case, the stupid behavior associated with too much alcohol is not necessarily reserved for Norway. I remember my father telling me about the Christmas parties at his workplace in Manhattan in the 1960s and 70s—the drunkenness, the bad behavior, the screwing around—all of it. He had no use for it, and I thus grew up with a father and a man that I could look up to and respect. I measure so many men in my generation against the caliber of my father, and many of them just don’t measure up. I actually think that many of the younger men I know behave better and more respectfully toward their wives and women in general than the men my age (middle-aged). Was my father perfect in every way? No. But when it came to behaving in a moral way, yes, he was a good man. The Christmas parties he talked about eventually went the way of many morally-questionable things—they became obsolete, killed by their own excesses, by the ‘never knowing when to stop’ mentality. I’ve heard that many corporations no longer have Christmas parties in the USA as a result of bad behavior. I don’t know if this is still the case, or how it’s done there anymore. All I know is that very little of this stupidity has to do with the real meaning or spirit of Christmas. And in the end, it’s the real meaning and spirit of Christmas that matters to me.