Julefrokost

Nearly every company in Denmark has a Julefrokost, which literally translates to Christmas lunch. These events used to be just that, lunches, but over time they have evolved into the more common evening party. The funny thing is that they are notorious for people going crazy. It is important to note that spouses are almost never invited to these parties; it is just co-workers. Consequently, apparently it is the number one cause of divorce in Denmark... because people get very drunk, and do things that they normally should not. In fact, I was reading one of the daily newspapers on the train that had something like 10 tips for your Julefrokost. Some of the items I could understand were things like:
- leave your cell phone at home. This is because you are likely to send SMSs that you might regret when sober, for example, SMSs to ex's or your boss.
- Monday morning do not hesitate to go and apologize for something you may have done to or with a co-worker; it is always better to settle these kinds of things right away rather than have it cause problems later in your working relationship.

Another thing I learned about these parties is that they are highly organized. I was on the 'committee' to organize ours, and it involved far more than just a nice dinner...

Ours was held on Thursday Dec 13. First we started out with Glygg, which is warm, mulled red wine with spices and raisins, served with various cookies (pebern¯dder, brunkager, etc). Then we had hired 2 dance instructors, and we had a 1.5 hour group lesson on jive and cha-cha. People were really into it, and it was great fun! Note that we did invite spouses, otherwise the male-female ratio would have been disastrous. Here are some photos.





From there, we hired a bus to take us into downtown, where we had dinner at one of my favourite cafes, Cafe Katz (another bonus of being on the committee, choosing the venue!). We had the entire downstairs of the restaurant and enjoyed a lovely 4-course meal. Even during the meal we had some organized events; one was a sort-of contest - we had asked everyone to provide photos from their youth, and we would call upon 2 people at a time to compete against each other to guess who was the subject of the photo. This was alot of fun! Finally we attempted a sing-a-long which went somewhat south when we tried to teach a Slovak song... We ended the evening at a local pub around the corner. No one got too crazy so I don't think there will be any negative fallout from the evening. People were jovial, outgoing, and generally seemed to have a great night!