Latitude 38’s In-Person Office Christmas Party Ruled

The “Office Christmas Party” — how long has it been since we were all able to get together in relative freedom and comfort to have an evening of fun and frivolity? Though we know there are some who would rather avoid such gatherings if possible, the majority of people have missed the parties, our crew included! We tried the Zoom cocktail party, twice. All well and good, to some extent, when everyone is in the same time zone, but we know from experience that drinking Island Painkillers at 10:00 a.m. leads to a very distorted view of the rest of the day.

Last week, however, real life triumphed and the Latitude 38 crew (minus a couple of the team who couldn’t be there — you were missed!) got together for dinner and drinks, and a Broken Santa gift exchange. Yes, you read right. Stealing Santa was renamed Broken Santa. The game was the same, but the fun was brutal. Stealing was rife, and if it hadn’t been for the well-written rules of engagement, all might have been lost. One of our sailors, who has spent time on the US Sailing Area Appeals Committee, sent us all the rules in advance, and on the appointed night was dedicated to ensuring fair play among all the Santas.

We enjoyed the Broken Santa gift exchange so much, we decided to share the rules with our readers, just in case any are looking forward to (or dreading) their own Office Christmas Party in the next week or so.

The Rules:

1. Each participant brings one or more wrapped gifts, with a maximum retail price or market value as specified by the event organizer. All gifts are added to the “pile.” It’s desirable to have a few more gifts than the number of participants.
2. Participants are assigned a turn number at random. This can be done by drawing playing cards from a shuffled deck. Low numbers go first, ties broken by higher-ranked suits. (Conventional suit priority is spades, hearts, diamonds, clubs.)
3. Each participant, on their turn, chooses a wrapped gift from the pile or “swipes” a gift from someone who has already chosen and unwrapped a gift.
4. Wrapped gifts must be unwrapped immediately after being chosen and displayed in view throughout play.
5. When a gift is swiped, the person from whom it is swiped gets another turn at that time. They can choose another wrapped gift from the pile or swipe an opened gift from another participant.
6. A person whose gift is swiped cannot swipe it right back. This is the “no reversals” rule.
7. After a gift has been swiped two times, it cannot be swiped again. This is the “freeze after two swipes” rule.
8. When there are more gifts than participants, the turn order begins again with the lowest number. This mitigates the disadvantage of drawing a low number in the game, because the participants with early turns and fewer choices get an extra turn.
9. Protests and Requests for Redress shall be in accordance with Part 5 of the Racing Rules of Sailing, as published by World Sailing, www.sailing.org.

There you have the thread of civility that kept our crew in check on that crazy night. Did we mention, stealing was rife? Grown adults were brought nearly to tears as the gifts they had opened with wonder and then, openly cherished, were whisked away without so much as a “sorry.” Attempts to reclaim said cherished item, or steal another in its place that had already done its two rotations, were quickly and firmly shut down by the official. Protests were tolerated only long enough to reiterate the corresponding rule.

At the end of the day, there may indeed have been a broken Santa or two languishing among the discarded wrappings. But we’re happy to say that spirits remained high. Joyous even. We all recognized the privilege of being able to spend an entire evening in the company of those who for the past three or so years have been images on a screen, voices over the ethernet, or sometimes an old-school phone call. And in that regard we gave each other our best, saltiest sailor love and made the most of our first-in-a-long-time “Office Christmas Party.”