Stuart Heritage: why I hate parties

Witnessing the hideous truth of your colleagues in full unfettered celebration mode. Being cornered by the planet’s biggest bore. There are so many reasons Stuart Heritage will be saying nay this party season
Stuart Heritage21 November 2019

I love Christmas.

I love everything about Christmas. I love the lights, the music, the food, the bad old films they show on TV every morning. You can sign me up for the whole thing, wholesale, but with one tiny proviso: do not, under any circumstances, invite me to your party.

Let me be clear: the problem is mine and not yours. Your party has been thoughtfully planned and beautifully executed. When it happens, your guests will be bursting with excitement about it. They’ll spend all day Here-Comes-The-Girlsing themselves to a fine sheen. They’ll Instagram the marrow from it while it’s happening. Once it’s over they’ll talk about it for years to come. Your party will be an event. It will succeed in every way, I guarantee it. But, still, I’m not going. Don’t even ask. You can’t make me.

I stopped going to Christmas parties five years ago and I’ve never been happier. The reasons I stopped going are numerous; but the main one is that I appear to have a personality defect that prevents me from concluding conversations. I’ve seen how normal people talk, and it looks fantastic. After a few minutes of chit chat, they’ll organically bring their discussion to a close and drift off to talk to someone else. But for whatever reason — I suspect it’s a desire not to appear rude — I always find myself spending the entire duration of the party pinned to a wall, nodding and oh-reallying my way through some dullard’s three-hour monologue, helplessly watching all the people I actually want to talk to have the time of their lives 20 feet away. It’s excruciating, and it also probably explains why all my romantic relationships tend to last for approximately two years longer than they need to.

This isn’t just a Christmas party thing. It’s all parties. Even my own. My own are even worse, in fact, because that means inviting people from every different compartment of my life into the same room. I’m terrified that they’ll compare notes about me and discover that I behave in a wildly different manner around each of them and come to the correct conclusion that I am a total fraud. I mean this. I spent weeks and weeks fruitlessly trying to convince my wife that we didn’t really need to have a wedding reception. I lost that particular argument, and it all turned out fine, but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t happy when it was over.

There are other off-putting elements, too. I don’t really drink any more, since my kids have made it very clear that they do not respect hangovers, so it’s not a whole lot of fun to be encased in a room with a bunch of people who do. Especially when they get so drunk that their entire personalities change. Especially when you work with them, and you’re forced to reconcile the image you’ve built of them as a kind and compassionate family man with the reality of the drooling horndog crawling around the floor with a scrap of tinsel in his teeth.

Then there’s the basic health aspect. It’s November. Christmas is more than a month away. I have enough of a love-hate relationship with my waistband at the best of times; if I went to all the parties I was invited to, I’d end the year looking like a gout-stricken Angry Birds pig. Better to limit my extravagances, for everyone’s sake.

Now, there’s a very good chance that you’re reading this because you hate parties too, and you also want to get out of attending any of them. If that’s the case, please allow me to me be your Yoda.

Rule number one when it comes to party-swerving is that it’s always better to seek forgiveness than ask for permission. Never, under any circumstances, should you respond negatively to an RSVP. When you decline an invite, you open yourself up to persuasion. The party thrower will try everything in their arsenal to change your mind. They’ll flatter you. They’ll goad you. They’ll soften you up with promises that you won’t have to stay long. In one case, a couple of years ago, an editor of mine declared mandatory attendance for a work party, citing a so-called ‘three line whip’ to make sure that I went.

This wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t declined the invitation ahead of time. I should have simply not turned up. That way they wouldn’t have had the opportunity to make me feel bad and there’s a good chance that they wouldn’t have even registered my absence in the first place. But you can’t attempt this with every party — if there’s a dinner involved, and your attendance has a concrete monetary value, then you must always show up. Ghosting a dinner is a dick move, and the image of your empty chair will not be forgotten easily.

Of course there will be other instances when you have to attend. In these situations, it’s good to be the last one in and the first one out. Get there once the party’s in full swing, have a brief chat with all the important people and then sneak out. When they wake up the following morning, hungover and shamefaced, they’ll be too busy dealing with their overwhelming cloud of regret to fully parse the evening. If they even have a sliver of a recollection of you saying hello to them, it means you’ve got away with it.

Hesitantly, I’m going to share my secret weapon. Until now this has been classified at the highest level, and telling you genuinely risks ruining the rest of my life. But, nevertheless, here goes. If there are children at the party, go and hang out with them. Go up to some kids, ask their name, pretend to mishear them, and you’re in. This works a charm. Kids are the much more entertained by your nonsense than adults — do a couple of big reactions whenever they talk to you and you’ll end up with a new swarm of best friends. Plus the grown-ups will think you’re amazing for looking after their children, even though you’re only doing it to avoid listening to their tedious discussions about school catchment areas. It’s a win-win for everyone.

Now I come to think of it, in fact, kids’ parties might actually be my favourite type of party. My eldest son has just started school, so I’m gingerly dipping my toes into the birthday party circuit, and I have to say that I’m really quite enjoying it. You don’t actually have to do anything at a kids’ party, other than sit around the edge of the room with the other parents, silently scrolling through your phone. Better still, there’s always a hard out. These parties stop at 2pm, latest. They barely even make a mark in your day. They’re terrific.

My final piece of advice is one I’m just learning. Get over yourself and go. If you’re at a party that you didn’t want to attend, fake it. Act confident and people will think you’re confident. Act happy and there’s a chance that you might actually end up happy. Stop being a grinch, live in the moment for once and enjoy yourself. These parties are never as bad as you think. Listen, idiot, it’s Christmas. People like you. Going to a few parties here and there won’t be the end of the world. You might even enjoy yourself.

But still, don’t invite me to yours.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in