Instead, my mailbox is flooded with e-mails from employment lawyers offering cautionary tales about the perils of holiday parties and advice on how law firms and companies can keep a lid on their holiday parties.

I much prefer having the lid blown off. Sadly, though, my job is to help keep you gainfully employed and law firms humming along. So here’s a refresher about the rules of holiday party throwing (some of the advice previously appeared in The Careerist–see “Keep Bad Santa on a Leash”):