Let us eat and drink, but also think if you really want to make your clients and customers feel loved, we ve got some networking tips we ve got for you to take on board at a time when the Christmas message tends to get forgotten.
Once upon a time, Christmas really meant something. It was a day like no other. A bit like the cup final, albeit the same chap appeared to lift the trophy every year.
There was a magic and mystery about Christmas, especially if you were still dressed in short trousers, but any hint of reverence about it has largely been discarded today.
Christmas has metamorphosed into a marketing jamboree. There is a religious holiday in there somewhere if you peer very closely but for the majority of the population it has become an exercise in excess.
People spend money they don’t have on things they don’t need while eating and drinking themselves to a standstill and connecting with each other goes out the window, which is where networking tips can indeed come in useful.
Of course, many do go to church to bless the birth of baby Jesus, but often as a matter of habit rather than through any deep religious conviction.
Quite how many attend on a regular basis is a matter of some conjecture but the sanctity of Christmas with all its symbolism is very much an afterthought when compared with a constant diet of television pap to dull the senses.
You can always rely upon watching Zulu or The Sound of Music for the 93rd time in recent memory or taking bets on who will fall asleep before, during or after the Queen’s Speech.
And then there are the presents, which occasionally provide a surprise on the upside but usually demonstrate the rampant consumerism all around, and need for networking tips to help us all reconnect.
An industry has been built around the celebration of a single day in the calendar but so much of the conversation around it has become barren and soulless.
A century ago, soldiers in the trenches were grateful for every scrap of humanity in the aftermath of the Battle of the Somme in which some 60,000 British troops had been killed or injured on the first day alone.
There was a sense of fellowship and consideration despite the terrible privation all around and connecting to one another was the norm without networking tips. Nobody was too concerned whether they had 1916 version of the XBox or an elderflower infused hamper of handcrafted goods.
It was a time for reflection and remembrance, when the gift of a warm scarf or a packet of chocolate bourbons from home meant everything. It was so much more personal.
Times change, of course, but we live in a very impersonal world in which the ubiquitous Christmas card has now assumed a different role. It enables you to communicate with everyone you have ignored the rest of the year.
You told me I was special and that you loved me. And now I am consigned to a line in your database of contacts.
Christmas cards are utterly meaningless when filled with empty words and act as a reminder of how you routinely forget me over the rest of the year. Do you know the feeling?
How much better if you sent a note to friends and family on, say, 25 May instead. Its unexpected arrival would tell me that you genuinely cared and that, as an individual, you did not run with the herd. And I would remember you and your sentiments for the best of reasons.
Continue on the next page for five networking tips to digest with that second plate of mince pies.
