Suggestions for holiday morale boosters?

First of all, SYZ, let me encourage you to NOT give up. You may have received negative responses from the team that discourage you. Your discouragement alone could keep you from planning your best holiday party ever. I have noticed that even “the Grinch in the group” secretly wants something to happen during the holiday time. You may never get them to say so, Grinches being what they are, but they need you to do your best.

Does not everyone in your clinic celebrate Christmas? For those of us that don’t, it’s hard to get excited about the season, even if you call it “holiday season” and not “Christmas”.Maybe the “Grinch in the group” isn’t a grinch—just not a Christian and resents being force-fed the holiday. If that’s some of the reticense, then I think you need to be respectful of that and not try to push people into celebrating a holiday that is not theirs.

It’s elective, right?
If the only people who come are people whoactually want to, does this invalidate
the party? Does it invalidate your good organizational efforts?
A really fun small party this time might mean that next time people won’t want to miss it.
Somehow I’m not seeing the downside to this.

I’m one of the people sjg102379 refers to: I celebrate religious Christmas, but I find the secular Christmas to be shallow and consumerist, and I avoid it. So if I were one of your employees, the harder you tried to get me to enjoy secular Christmas, the less interested and more grinchy I’d be.

This is a workplace. What matters is that people show up, treat each other with professional courtesy and respect, and do their work well. Don’t try to force people to have fun celebrating your holiday your way; offer a Christmas party for the people who celebrate Christmas the same way you do if you want to, but understand that your “grinches” have other beliefs, other priorities, and other traditions.

@u101547: Trying to pester me into me enjoying your particular something during the holiday time because you think that when I say “I’d rather not attend a company Christmas party of any sort” I really mean Bother me more, because I need to be harangued into it” is the best way to get me to complain to HR about religious harassment. Don’t do it. Plan whatever party you think appropriate, invite me if you must, but accept a polite refusal and leave it at that.

An office group I worked with each picked a name, (10 of us), then bought that person a child’s toy that reminded us of that person. At our party we opened the gifts, had a lot of laughs, and then put them in a huge Santa bag and took them to the closest firehouse to donate to local children who might not have any holiday without donation. It was great, especially since we all enjoyed poking fun at each other, and the end all was no money wasted on crappy gifts and we felt good about giving.