The office Christmas party.

Either it's a great end-of-year celebration and a chance to blow off steam with your colleagues,

or it's yet another work obligation filled with forced jollity and awkward interactions during one of the busiest times of the year.

Whichever it is, it's a concept that goes back at least as far as the time that Charles Dickens wrote a Christmas Carol in 1843.

Because that story features a very famous depiction of an office Christmas party during Scrooge's time with the spirit of Christmas past.

In the scene, Scrooge witnesses his younger self as an apprentice to old Fezziwig on Christmas Eve.

Master, bless it heart, old Fezziwig, my master alive again, and hosted one of his Christmas parties.

Let's eat with your partner.

Let's do him.

Thou and purchase, box through, spread the needle, and back to your places.

Well, let's all thank goodness that most of us aren't expected to dance at office Christmas

parties like everyone was at one of Feziwig's parties.

But, since we're talking about it, what was with that comment we just heard from Feziwig about

bow and curtsey thread the needle? In fact, the passage from the novella describes in elaborate

detail the dancing that takes place. It says, in they all came one after another, some shyly, some

boldly, some gracefully, some awkwardly, some pushing, some pulling.

In they all came, anyhow, and every how.

Away they all went, twenty couple at once, hands half round and back again the other way,

down the middle and up again, round and round in various stages of affectionate grouping,

old top couple always turning up in the wrong place,

new top couple starting off again as soon as they got there.

All top couples at last and not a bottom one to help them.

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