THE CHRISTMAS DO

I had forgotten how much of an anti-climax it is.

The marquee was a mess. At the back, the neatly dressed staff were milling around the white-draped bar, waiting for us to finish packing away our instruments. In between us and them were fourteen round tables, bedecked with empty glasses, bottles, rumpled napkins, unused cutlery, screwed-up wrapping paper, party hats and the remains of silver cardboard crackers. The carpeted floor was strewn with paper aeroplanes.

Paper aeroplanes. I'd forgotten that too. When the dessert plates were whisked away and the staff circled the table with pots of coffee, the paper aeroplane war began. The pages of carol booklets and personalised place settings were suddenly being folded into streamlined flyers, zipping through the air and criss-crossing above the tables to great amusement.

I watched all this at the time, suddenly remembering that it had happened this way last year too. In the absence of anything better to do, engineers, sales people, renewals executives and finance guys had resorted to all the fun of makeshift origami wars. It seemed like lo-fi fun, but I wasn't sure then, why I couldn't seem to join in.

I wasn't sure again today. Actually, I wasn't sure about a lot of things. I folded up the keyboard stand and snapped the locks shut on the Roland XP-80 case. That was it then. Everyone had just sort of dispersed, clambered drunkenly back onto the coach or back to their vehicles and had gone on to the next thing without really thinking about it. Nobody had said anything. It all felt really anti-climactic.

It has occurred to me though, that there might be something deeper going on. For years now, I think I've been expecting the Christmas Do to be rather like Fezziwig's Christmas Ball in A Christmas Carol. Fezziwig of course, is a character designed to be the opposite of Ebenezer Scrooge - gregarious, generous, frivolous and fun - a picture of the last remaining small tradesmen at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, on the cusp of the capitalist awakening. He throws an annual ball for his employees in which he himself is the soul of merriment, the life of the party and the magnanimous host of a splendid occasion. This, says the subtext, is how to keep Christmas - with a party, with each other, celebrating together.

What's deeper is that it's that feeling of togetherness that seems to be missing, despite actually being, well, together. Again, that's part of the reason why some of these winter wonderlands feel so empty I think - they ultimately exist to fill the pockets of their shareholders, their owners, their investors, rather than the old-fashioned idea of good will and benevolence. The Christmas 'Do' seems exactly that, a Do, something you have to 'do' because it's expected. I think the likes of Fezziwig just wanted to celebrate Christmas together and wanted to do it with style. Where are they, the Fezziwigs in our century? The motives of our hearts are sometimes much more obvious than we realise when we do things out of duty.

I could go on about that togetherness thing. I think it stretches all the way through the ages, through the carols and the songs, from the warbling Mariah Carey to the dashing Pierpont, from Wham to Wesley, from FX Gruber to Noddy Holder. I think the theme aches at the heart of the story, the point in time when God decided to become one of us, with us, together, with us. And his name shall be... Emmanuel, God. With. Us. This is the ultimate 'togetherness' at the irreplaceable core of Christmas, whether you realise it or not. And I think we all notice when it's taken out.

I carried my stuff to the car. Perhaps I should have joined in, made an effort, folded up an aeroplane or two of my own. Maybe I'm more Scrooge than Fezziwig and I don't even know it. Maybe, I'm just too sensible, too... boring. Or maybe I just want to be together with my family and my friends.

The air was cold and the sky was slipping into the dark blue dusk of a December day. A slender moon hung motionless above the brittle trees and a gust of wind kicked up my scarf. That's it then - another year of work. I don't have to go back in now until January 5th. I breathed a sigh of relief and switched on the ignition.

"Driving home for Christmas, yeah," sang Chris Rea through the radio. I laughed.