The Christmas Party

A little comedy about a Christmas Party

The Sterling & Sons Accounting Firm annual Christmas party was always mandatory, always held in the beige event hall of the airport Hilton, and always introduced with a theme that made everyone immediately regret their career choices.

This year's theme, announced in a stern memo from Mrs. Sterling (wife of the titular Sterling and self-appointed Director of Fun), was "A Very Wild-Life Christmas Gala."

Our protagonist, Gary, a mild-mannered accounts junior whose loudest internal thought was usually about whether he’d remembered to defrost the chicken, had done his best. He was wearing a beige sweater with felt patches depicting a highly confused owl wearing earmuffs. It was lame, but compliant.

He arrived promptly at 6:30 PM, armed with the social goal of consuming one free glass of sparkling wine and escaping before the raffle of the fruitcake signed by Mr. Sterling.

The Scene of the Crime

The ballroom was already a disaster.

The decorations were an uncomfortable clash between elegant white twinkle lights and taxidermy (or very convincing stuffed) forest creatures. A life-sized, unsettlingly muscular plush moose stood guarding the coat check, its eyes staring into the middle distance, perhaps contemplating the futility of human existence.

Mrs. Sterling, dressed as a terrifyingly realistic Snow Leopard (complete with a tail that required its own personal space bubble), greeted him.

"Gary! Wonderful! You nailed the 'Confused Avian' look!" she hissed, her face paint cracking slightly near her cheekbones.

"Thank you, Mrs. Sterling. Happy holidays," Gary mumbled, making a direct line for the bar, where the only thing on tap was a dreadful concoction called "The Festive Fox Trot Punch." It was bright green, tasted vaguely of mouthwash, and was visibly moving in the bowl.

Agnes and the Antlers of Destruction

The party truly kicked off when Agnes from Human Resources appeared.

Agnes was normally a beacon of sensible cardigans and laminated policy documents. Tonight, however, Agnes was transformed. She was wearing a full-body reindeer costume that seemed to have been designed for a small horse, complete with enormous, drooping, velvet antlers that constantly got caught on things.

Agnes had discovered the Festive Fox Trot Punch. Within twenty minutes, she had elevated herself from sensible cardigan Agnes to Agnes, Destroyer of Worlds.

She approached Gary, sloshing a cup of green liquid. "Gary! Gary, I’m a majestic forest beast!" she bellowed, attempting to nuzzle him with her giant foam nose.

"You look great, Agnes. Very… cervine," Gary replied, leaning away from the scent of peppermint schnapps and existential dread.

"We need to dance!" Agnes declared.

This was bad. The music, selected by Mr. Sterling himself, was currently an instrumental jazz flute rendition of "The Twelve Days of Christmas."

Before Gary could invent a sudden, debilitating inner-ear infection, Agnes spotted her arch-rival, Chet from Accounts Payable, who was dressed as an exceptionally disgruntled Beaver.

"Chet!" Agnes yelled, her antlers snagging on a hanging mistletoe sprig, causing the entire cluster of plastic berries to shower onto the head of Mr. Sterling, who was attempting to deliver a toast.

The Costume Catastrophe

The annual highlight was the Costume Contest, judged by Mr. Sterling (who was dressed simply as "A Man Who Owns Things," which was apparently a mandatory theme for management).

The contestants lined up:

Doris from Marketing: A perfectly executed Arctic Tern. Elegant, subtle, boring.
Chet the Beaver: Still disgruntled, clutching a tiny foam log.
Todd from IT: A very sweaty, realistic skunk who had misjudged the temperature of the room. (The judging was swift: Todd was disqualified and asked to stand near the open window.)
Agnes the Reindeer: Wobbling violently, radiating pure, green-punch energy.

"And now, our final contestant! Agnes!" Mrs. Sterling announced, trying to keep the microphone away from her face paint.

Agnes stumbled forward. "I call this," she slurred, lifting one hoofed hand, "The Fawn Frolic of Festive Delight!"

She launched into a clumsy, high-kicking dance routine. The antlers, already unstable, began to rotate.

She spun once, and her left antler hooked the arm of Chet the Beaver, yanking the foam log right out of his hand, which sailed across the room and knocked the tiny Santa hat off Gary’s owl.

She spun twice, and the right antler clipped the enormous, tiered dessert trolley, which was bearing a magnificent, five-foot-tall gingerbread house meant to look like the main Sterling & Sons office.

The gingerbread house shuddered.

Agnes, oblivious, finished her routine by attempting a dramatic flourish that involved throwing her head back.

The velocity of the throw, combined with the momentum of the antlers, was too much. The antlers detached completely, flying off her head like furry, drunk boomerangs�"one embedding itself in the Snow Leopard tail of Mrs. Sterling, the other soaring toward the main prize display.

It hit the centerpiece: a delicate, hand-carved ice sculpture of Mr. Sterling’s face, which had taken three hours and $600 to produce.

The antler struck Mr. Sterling's icy nose.

The statue exploded.

A geyser of icy water, crushed granite, and Mr. Sterling's frozen face shards erupted directly over the main buffet table, showering the entire carving station�"and specifically, the elaborate presentation salmon�"in crystalline shrapnel.

Silence, Then the Sound of Cheating

The room froze, silenced not by awe, but by the sheer, magnificent horror of watching a six-hundred-dollar representation of the CEO’s hubris disintegrate on top of the artisanal smoked fish.

Agnes, still in the center of the room, paused, wobbled, and then looked down at her bare head.

"Oh," she said quietly. "Are we playing hide and seek with the horns now?"

Mr. Sterling, still covered in plastic mistletoe from the earlier incident, took a slow, deep breath, his hands clenched into fists of pure, unadulterated accounting fury.

"That," he stated in a voice that promised mass layoffs, "was my face."

Mrs. Sterling, whose Snow Leopard tail was now vibrating slightly with the force of the embedded velvet antler, just pointed a stiff, clawed finger at Todd the Skunk.

"Todd," she whisper-screamed, "you are no longer disqualified! You win the contest! Take your gift card and please, for the love of all that is wild, get that woman off the floor!"

Gary seized the opportunity. He retrieved his tiny Santa hat, placed it back on his confused owl, and quietly slipped past the muscular moose. He didn't look back, but as the elevator doors closed, he heard the faint, distant sound of Agnes attempting to negotiate with the moose.

He decided then and there that next year, he would spend Christmas Eve convincing his wife they needed a sudden, unexplained trip to a very silent monastery. It was the only way to avoid the Festive Fox Trot Punch and the antlers of inevitable doom.