Women at Work

My workplace has a holiday party for staff. It's nothing elaborate and it happens during work hours (lunch) the week before Christmas. Spouses and other family are not invited and everyone dresses business casual although maybe a bit more "festive".

I've been at my job for 2 years...the first year they took us to a nicer Greek restaurant (it's not usually open for lunch so the whole place was just us) and last year it was a banquet room at a steakhouse. After the meal, there is a big gift exchange. The type where everyone brings a $10 gift and we swap and other people can "steal" your gift etc. It's tacky but also sorta fun. Afterward we get a small ($25-50, we're just a non-profit hehe) bonus check and token-type gifts from our supervisors (little bags of coffee, small Bath & Body Works or Body Shop stuff, candy). By the end it is around 2 pm and they let us go home early instead of going back to the office (which is everyone's favorite part).

3 of my coworkers are also in my away-from-work circle of friends, so those 3 come to the holiday cocktail party my husband and I throw each year :-) However, we don't exchange gifts with each other. One of them has become one of my closest friends so we may exchange gifts just between the 2 of us at some point this Christmas, I don't know.

There's a company holiday party. Individual departments may have their own party. My department always has a week-long Secret Santa-type gift exchange that ends with a holiday party. The Secret Santa is voluntary.

I don't think anyone exchanges gifts with other co-workers. This year, I do have small gifts for my group. The boss always get homemade cookies :)

Each of the offices (all in different cities) have a winter party sometime in December - ours is the 1st saturday.  They are pretty fun events - dinner and dancing, hanging out, door prizes, etc.  Nothing extreme or outrageous or anything, but a fun time.  It is nice to see coworkers outside of work, spend a little time, see their spouses, etc. 

We also generally have some sort of in-office party before people leave for the winter holidays - sweets and hot drinks. 

The company that my husband works for has cancelled their year end party this year due to the bad economy - they had to lay off a bunch of people and have gone through a big re-org and didn't think it would be right to party it up and spend a bunch of money.  Their parties are legendary though - huge blow outs with fairly well-known bands, tons of food, drinks flowing like water, all kinds of entertainment.