I’m from asia and in my country people *love* christmas. And office culture celebrates it just as much. It’s common here for colleagues to sing and dance. There are raffles to be won in parties and food is served for everyone. The bigger the company the more elaborate the celebration. People play lots of games that involve acting, bring me, and other party games. Would it be weird for you if you were asked to sing and dance to give love on Christmas day? (And no, you can’t say no.)
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That highly varies depending on the workplace, but it’s usually nothing crazy. Some nice decorations, usually there’s a cake for everyone to eat and it’s not unusual to buy eachother gifts (everyone’s names are written on small pieces of paper, you pick a random person and get them a small gift).
Definitely no singing and dancing, can’t imagine doing that. Not that it would be forbidden or something, it would just end up kinda awkward. People are more reserved here.
At my old lab in the UK the first year PhD students were always tasked with organising a Christmas dinner with a set menu at a local pub, and then back at the lab they’d organise a cocktail party with various nibbles, Christmassy booze and enough beer/cider to get everyone in the lab well and truly smashed.
There’s Christmas parties in most work places and often things like Secret Santa. There’s no forced singing and dancing, it may happen naturally after a lot of drinks at the Christmas party.
I had friends who joined one of the big accountancy firms as graduates and it was tradition that on one of their nights out, all of the newbies had to stand up in the middle of a restaurant and sing a song. I think I’d quit my job if a company tried to force me to do that..
Just to explain, I work in IT and my department has a pretty low average age.
Before Corona, Christmas parties were quite civilised with food in the restaurant, then silly Secret Santa, we got presents, then my department ran away from the official Christmas party and celebrated in the city until everyone was rat-arsed.
Since Corona, there are no more company Christmas parties and the company advises its IT staff not to get together for parties under any circumstances, lest the “precious nerds” infect themselves with Corona…
So now we celebrate at people’s homes and put the smartphones in a locked box beforehand so that no one takes pictures…
We all decorate our desks / office area, the company Christmas Ball which is a fairly fancy meal & open bar, live band etc, we have a team Christmas lunch out, then usually a team night out on the last week / day in the office before breaking up for Christmas and we also do a department secret Santa. People usually bring festive food in all through December to leave in communal areas
Before covid, we had a Christmas meal out and drinks together each year, sometimes secret Santa. We have a tree and decorations for the office which we stick up.
Our work also gets very quiet over December so we close down over Christmas completely from Christmas Eve till the New Year bank holiday, as well as our boss being easier than normal on us the week leading up to Christmas. He’s pretty laid back as long as the work gets done anyway, but pre-Covid we’d usually slack off a lot in that week and someone would often stick on Christmas music or films in the background and we’d all chat a lot more.
No crazy activities AFAIK. It depends a lot on your office. Some might hold a Christmas jumper/sweater day, or have Christmas snacks for their staff. Most decorate at least a little bit. Traditional is a “kerstborrel” where everybody gets together for some drinks but due to COVID they’re now obviously either all cancelled or done very low-key. And any half-decent office will give/send their employees a “kerstpakket” with snacks, goodies, gift cards, whatever.
I work in a bakery related company so we mainly got (and are still getting) the snacks. And the entrance/break room are decorated with a tree and lights.
A christmas dinner/ party (in pre covid times a whole office dinner/ party). Often given a basket of treats/ simbolic gifts.
On Christmas Day, people aren’t at the office, since it’s a national holiday. And most people also take a few days off, usually either the last week of December or the first of January, so offices tend to look quite empty this time of year.
However, Christmas company dinners used to be a very big deal before the pandemic. They were held at some point during December, at night, and outside the office, in some restaurant or venue. Depending on the company type and size, it can range from a nice quiet dinner to a wilder party with alcohol where people let loose. Some singing and dancing might happen here, but nothing mandatory or organized.
Some companies hold a small cocktail hour too, a few days before Christmas, where people stop working for an hour or two, refreshments are served, the director gives a toast, people mingle and chat. There might be some Santa Claus hats worn, a few jokes thrown around, but it doesn’t tend to get too wild.
I wouldn’t like to be made to perform anything before my coworkers, and I think most of my colleagues wouldn’t either. However, the food and the raffles sound amazing!
We had a zoom christmas party this year, I thought it was gonna be a bit weird but it actually was a lot of fun. They got in a virtual magician into the meeting for an hour or so who did a ton of fun tricks.
I am a student, but I know many companies organize Chrismas lunches and diners, albeit far fewer in 2021 and, especially, 2020 because of the pandemic. Many companies also decorate.