Your ultimate guide for how to survive the festive party season

In order to fit in an evening of drinking, realistically, you need to slope out of the office around 4.30pm — 5pm at the latest — three times a week. Unfortunately, work does not finish until 6pm. The solution could be to start coming in an hour early to compensate (it’s called flexi-working. It’s trendy. Or you could just say that you are coming in an hour early to compensate. No one else who says they’re doing it actually is —in other words, the situation is win-win.

Other hacks include giving up on the elusive suggestion of eight hours’ sleep; inventing ‘appointments’ ‘in town’ to skip out 90 minutes early,and leaving a blow-up doll doppelganger in your desk chair to delude colleagues. NB: if this works, you need to get a new job, for several reasons.

Whatever you say about sticking to two units an evening and taking a couple of nights off, you’re probably going to mess up a fair few times. Cut yourself some slack — what your hangover doesn’t need is another guilt spiral. Though do perform some shallow calculations. If an event really isn’t worth getting drunk at, then gird your willpower and try to avoid going mad on the free wine. It’s probably wise to have a night off a week — if your liver is throbbing, that’s a bad sign — and if you don’t want to drink don’t. You’re not 15, and peer pressure is no reason to do anything. Anyone who laughs at you because you aren’t drinking definitely has a limited inner life.

If you’re brutal/honest, your December look is hollow-eyed, gaunt and puffy. Your ideal outfit is a jumper and the sort of greige slacks advertised, incongruously, in the classifieds ads found in the back pages of the weekend supplements. But the season expects you to bedazzle, to wear “a sequin”, and “a shoe” and to have a carousel of looks to take you from pub to ice rink to office Christmas lunch.

Certainly, sequins never goes amiss — it’s Christmas, after all (incidentally, all the evils you will visit upon yourself this month can be pinned to this catch-all phrase) — but you only need three working outfits, max, and they do not all need to be visible from space. Nor do they have to be novelty. Just because it’s Christmas, doesn’t mean you suddenly need to have a sartorial lobotomy.

Tailored trousers and a nice top will take you from 9am to 9pm. Avoid socks, ties or jumpers emblazoned with elves. Keep your face blank during the day — that will buy you seven more minutes in bed — and add red lipstick and/or eyeliner at 6pm. Also, everyone looks the same under the glow of festive lights.

If you are one of those committed obsessives who works out during the December apocolash, you have all our collective envy/disgust. If you must fit in some exercise, do so at lunchtime — neatly providing an opportunity to shower in the middle of the day. If you are late back to the office afterwards, you’re eating into work’s time, not your own. Your boss definitely won’t notice this. Talking about your workout is, obviously, forbidden.

On which note, if you haven’t been to a party since last Christmas, you might need a refresher course in rudimentary interaction. Top tips: standing so close that someone can feel your hot breath on their neck is still creepy, as is lingering eye contact, talking about your Tinder matches, and patting people on the shoulder four times in a minute. But frankly, just avoid mentioning Brexit and you’re laughing.

December is a carousel of compulsory and voluntary events — whichever way the dice rolls one night, the other is inevitably just around the corner.

A meltdown will come, most likely three glasses of chenin blanc down in the middle of a Secret Santa ceremony, when you realise with horror that you left the price tag on your panic-bought contribution and it will be revealed that, at £7.99, yours doesn’t hit the minimum generosity threshold of a tenner, It’ll be ugly, but you’re purging. Get your (first) meltdown out the way fast, so you can get on with things.

On Monday, consult your diary and cancel one thing. Use a dismissive excuse that hints at something troubling to close down persistent enquiry. If feasible, change your email address and move on. This frees up one evening — use it to sit at home, on a mini digital detox to preclude another meltdown.

If you are doing three events in one night, who are you? Anyway, arrive bang on time, clutch the host’s hand warmly in your own, tell an anecdote and make a French exit when backs are turned. Take a good hard look at yourself in the window of your Uber en route to the next event.

Save the last week for your friends — the boss is away, and you can be properly, legitimately hungover. And remember the golden rule, say yes to the impromptu. Spontaneous December is miles superior.

Your reputation is for life, not just for Christmas. In other words: you do actually have to come back to work at some point. Taking yourself down in a blaze of glory — or, flaming shots — might seem like the hero’s exit at the time, but it won’t be so funny when you spend January in social purgatory, having “a think about what you’ve done”.