| TED KRUCKEL 12.18.08 11:47 AM |
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| Since the Grinch Stole Christmas Parties, I Went in Search of Secret Santas |
| As company holiday parties get canceled or recession-proofed, I'm grieving and looking forward to the new year. |
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Remember Christmas?
Photo: Jason Kempin/Getty Images
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There are so many things to be mad at these days, but I hate to run with the crowd, so I have decided to focus my enmity on Lydia Hearst. She’s a big-haired model, and up until recently, a Page Six magazine columnist. That résumé bullet disappeared due to an item in her last column that basically said “shame on you” to Hearst magazines for “partying through the recession.” Then she said she didn’t write that, so Page Six printed her email showing she kind of did. (Apparently her literary skills, journalism pedigree regardless, were slight.) Then she complained about her employer (never wise) and, one way or another, she’s out of a job.
I didn’t need Page Six to tell me she couldn’t write; her musings, even assisted, were proof she can’t really think. I loved her column. But for some reason the swipe at her family’s company—she spelled out the link in case we couldn’t make the connection—got under my skin. First of all, I’m on the party beat, and I haven’t been blown away by the largesse of recent Hearst blowouts.
Secondly, who is this independently wealthy yet paid-to-party girl telling people not to throw them? The ire boiled hotter when I happened to notice that George Gurley, New York Observer writer and unapologetic party-goer (though he does often convey guilt), described a night of unusually debased debauchery—ending at 10:30 the next morning—that included a 6 a.m. phone call with Lydia Hearst inviting him to fly out to California for her birthday party. Now, I don’t think she was making calls to invitees before her morning jog, do you?
In fact, I’d argue that it’s people like her, materially unaffected by the economy yet endlessly bellyaching and cutting back, who are the reason so many professionals in the entertaining industry are having a cold Christmas.
I decided to ask around and get the real deal. Is it all Grinches and Scrooges? Or are there some secret Santas?
Nearly everyone in the finance industry I spoke to was completely miserable. Ain’t it grand?
My friend who worked at what was Merrill Lynch and who still has a job told me, “I can’t believe you have the nerve to call me and ask about our Christmas party. No one is even mentioning the words around here; so many of our friends lost their jobs.”
“Are you all taking a percentage of your paycheck and giving it to a fund for your out-on-the-streeters?” I wondered hopefully.
“You’re an asshole,” he replied.
And at Oppenheimer Funds: “Last year we were at Cipriani on Wall Street. First class. Midyear, we were told we were going to some middle of the road place at the South Street Seaport. In October, the whole thing was canceled.”
“I'm taking my group out to lunch. That's it.” He told me about a friend of his who worked at a different company but was in the same boat.
“He's having his group to his apartment for a drinks party and giving them all homemade cookies—six different kinds wrapped beautifully. I can't fault that, except that his place is going to be much nicer than all, or the vast majority, of his employees, and I always think that's a bit dicey.”
See, now even having a posh pad is economically incorrect.
The mood is even bleaker over at Moody’s Investors Service. Maybe it’s the recent Sunday New York Times feature that questioned the Wall Street watchdog’s role in over-grading Goldman Sachs’s sub-prime derivatives. One worker confided being dumbfounded by a posting in the office coffee kitchen, over the stick stirrers and powdered creamers: a list of the holiday celebration’s passed hors d’oeuvres and desserts.
“Then the light went on. Our holiday party is being held in our cafeteria, and the catering staff wanted to eliminate the site’s connotations by making it clear that food would be ‘passed,’ not congealed under sneeze guards.”
Swell!
I decided to try my luck with the magazine industry, once the world’s profligate entertainers. Assuming Cathie Black et al were obeying their heir-head’s marching orders, I called friends at Time Inc. and Condé Nast.
“Well, of course we’re going to have a party,” one glossy editor in chief said to me. “We’re just kind of going underground. And no, you can’t quote me.”
Lucy Danziger and her team at Self magazine have had a great year, but they don’t want to rub our noses in it. Her public relations person, Lauren Theodore, wrote me, “Self magazine is celebrating a very strong performance in 2008—both in terms of ad revenue and readership—but we are measured in our festivities because we know our success is not matched industry-wide. The entire staff will make merry at Pop Burger on Dec. 16 at a holiday party hosted by Self editor-in-chief Lucy Danziger and vice president/publisher Kim Kelleher.”
Finally, an actual party! Self magazine throws down! Woo-hoo.
But to temper the thrill of an actual, on the record, whoopty-do, Lauren also forwarded me a link to Lucy’s holiday party blog, titled predictably, “It’s not about the stuff.”
Lucky cancelled its annual mailing gift of nifty wrapping papers and ribbons (damn them) and instead announced the holiday with a recycled piece of paper imbedded with wildflower seeds, which you could simply place in your garden and grow, assuming you have a garden spot where you want a dense little square of unknown wildflowers, which I do not. Besides, if I didn’t plant this little sheet four years ago when People sent it to me, what makes you think I’m going to sow these seeds now?
No one at Time Inc. would (wisely?) go on the record, but one big magazine gave its people an extra day off to go shopping and another had an open hour or two at an unnamed bar, after which revelers were invited to stay, play, and pay their own way. Whoopee!
Teen Vogue, happy to be alive, had some sort of mall tour in New Jersey that I hear was clever but nobody called me back, which honestly, I’m cool with.
WWD took its crew to lunch at Mexican Radio, named presumably for the catchy Stan Ridgway song. Going Mexican always seems cheap to me, but the younger staffers seemed fine with it, citing “yummy margaritas and an afternoon pass from returning to the salt mines."
All this reminded me of what my friend, marketing consultant Ron Prince, noted: “I find that creativity is declining faster than the budgets.”
Bucking that trend, Food & Wine publisher Christina Grdovic Baltz didn’t let American Express’ corporate party cancellation get her down. She divided up her group into teams, assigned them various offices, and told them to create mini-themed parties that would be voted on.
“Fortunately for us, we have a variety of leftovers in our closet that made it easy to cater a party with leftovers,” she admitted. Her office’s theme was 007, which I assume means vodka.
Oh, and Secret Santa, if you’re out there, I want tons and tons of snow for Christmas, to wash away this year and paint a fresh new coat of white, which makes everything look better.
—Ted Kruckel
RELATED TOPICS
Corporate Holiday Parties, Page Six, Time Inc., Food & Wine Magazine, New York Observer, Women's Wear Daily, Condé Nast
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