A corporate Christmas may sound like a lump of coal. But with some silver and sparkly decorations, you can add Christmas cheer to your office.

Admit it: you don’t really like your boss, do you? And neither do you appreciate how, when your back is turned to brew a cuppa in the kitchenette, your colleagues say the kind of things about you that, well, let’s just say that they do not look good on your CV.

But that’s office life for you. It’s a nine-to-five grinding of teeth involving purposely misplaced files, rolling up of plastic folders to backstab your next-desk neighbour, and making claims that Steve from accounts has been generous, with himself but not with anybody else, with the memory sticks.

Yet there is hope. Because there are occasions when colleagues become friends and for a few hours, you come together in a truthful (and proverbial) embrace.

Approach the cost of Christmas decorations with the same attitude that your boss takes towards the entertaining budget – cheaply

The first is the farewell party for your old boss. Mind you, it’s not about the party – rather, it’s all about the farewell or, to call it by its true name, the good riddance.

The second is the office Christmas party. Because there is no better way to turn colleagues into friends than a menu of novelty gifts, party games and full access to the booze cabinet in the boardroom. And all against the backdrop of decked out desks.

Christmas competition

Working in a corporate environment, you should know that competition is the lifeblood of capitalism. So why not adopt the same mantra to office decorations? Organise a desk decorating competition to make sure that no bah-humbug colleague tries to pull out of decorating their desk. The winner gets time out of cleaning up after the office party.

Less is more

So you finally managed to get a desk decorating competition going. Colleagues are trawling the net for novel decorating ideas and the printer is wheezing with the amount of jobs it’s getting. Someone was even caught on camera borrowing a year’s supply of paperclips, after seeing a You Tube tutorial on how to build a Christmas tree using office supplies.

It’s all good – after all, dunking the angry biscuit of office life in a shot of Christmas spirit can’t be bad. However, know your limits. Your working space is a standard six by six cubicle, which means that the 10-foot Christmas tree you were planning to get from home will not fit.

While the boss may be willing to give you some time off to decorate your desk, it doesn’t mean that you get to spend all your productive hours on your Christmas efforts. Also, don’t overdo it. Make sure that you don’t pile up your desk in a way that the computer monitor looks like some blinking, distant star.

Cheap cheer

Approach the cost of Christmas decorations with the same attitude that your boss takes towards the entertaining budget – cheaply.

However, cheap doesn’t necessarily mean dreary. There is a lot of stuff running around that you can use to create novel Christmas decorations. For instance, discarded computer memory boards are green and silver, the same colour of a Christmas tree. There are decorations which cost nothing – changing your computer desktop to a Christmassy one is free and adds a nice and sparkly touch.

Also, don’t hike up the office’s utility bill by hanging a million watts of Christmas lights and switching them on from nine to five. There are USB Christmas lights and kits which you can plug into your computer.

You can also be part of the Christmas decorations. If you don’t have meetings, put on a Santa hat. And it’s fun to answer calls from a colleague with a “ho ho ho.” Just make sure that it’s not your boss calling.