Office Holiday Party Hats

It arrives on the calendar in early November as an invitation, which is the first joke, because an invitation can be declined and this cannot. Somewhere between the booking of the venue and the printing of the name badges, a party becomes an occasion, and an occasion becomes a thing your absence would be noticed at. The phrase for this is mandatory fun, and it is one of the great pieces of corporate English — two words that cancel each other out and are nonetheless perfectly accurate. Then there is the gift exchange, an economy with a stated ceiling that nobody observes in the same direction. Somebody draws their own name and says nothing. Somebody receives a candle, as they did last year, from a colleague who has correctly identified that they know nothing about them. Somebody wins the white elephant by taking the only good item three times in a row and becomes, briefly, a figure of real controversy. These hats are written from inside it and pointed at the ritual rather than at anybody in the room — a hat that mocks a specific colleague is a hat you can never wear to the party. These you can.