The Season of Saying 'No'

It's that time of year again, isn't it?  You know what I mean - the time when we're still too far from Christmas for the newspapers to completely give up and fill their pages will festive bollocks, but instead run articles that pretend to be lifestyle advice, but are really seasonal filler.  Hence, we've had The Guardian's G2 supplement reassuring us that skipping the office Christmas party won't necessarily be taken as a slight adversely effect your promotion prospects.  This was followed up a few days later by a piece on how to say 'No' at this time of year in order to avoid getting stressed out by accepting too many commitments.  No shit, Sherlock was my reaction.  As I've chronicled here before, I spent decades not going to office Christmas parties - the very first one I ever went to put me off for life and I never attended another.  Interestingly, my always polite turnings down of invitations was sometimes taken as some kind of slight against colleagues, despite my assurances that it was nothing personal, I just didn't like office functions of any kind.  Luckily, however, I never had any promotion prospects so, regardless of their reactions, my 'career' was never affected.  

But turning down those invitations (and they weren't always just for workplace parties - when I was working in Whitehall, I once declined the opportunity to attend a Christmas party at the US embassy in favour of going down to my local pub for a few pints with friends, instead), taught me how easy it actually is to say 'no' to work-related stuff.  For quite a while I was good at it, but then seemed to lose the knack and ended up covering other peoples' jobs for no extra money, but for extra hours instead.  Eventually, of course, this contributed to my stress problems which, in turn, led to a bout of serious illness and three months off work sick.  When I got back to work, I started saying 'no' again in self-defence.  It's surprising, though, how easy it is to say 'no' and turn stuff down once you get over the idea that we seem to have been indoctrinated with that any kind of refusal is somehow impolite and selfish.  But really, it isn't.  Doing stuff just because feel that you have some vague social obligation to do so is just crazy and a sure road to unhappiness.  Do stuff because you want to do it, (OK, I know, there are things you either are obligated to do, like paying your taxes or not raping and/or murdering people, plus stuff it is advisable to do, like attending medical appointments and taking prescribed medications, but hopefully, that goes without saying).  So, I don't need to read vaguely seasonally justified newspaper articles to tell me the virtues of saying 'no' to social events.  I mean, I can't tell you happy I am since I stopped going to weddings many years ago - it's like my late father told me: 'I prefer funerals to weddings because you t least don't have to pretend to be having fun'.  The wisest words he ever said to me.