The Christmas season is upon us once more!

The ADQE office are in festive spirits now – our decorations are now up (photo of our tree below) and we’re spending far too much free time shopping online.

This post shows off some highlights some of our festive activities, as well as wishing everyone a very Merry Christmas!

Staff Christmas Social 2016

The “Switching on the Sussex Christmas Tree Lights” event was wonderful and we all appreciated the fantastic performances from the Show Choir and the Big Band.

The selection of songs – including a few not traditionally festive numbers such as Toto’s “Africa” and the Amy Winehouse version of “Valerie” – were highly enjoyable.

The tree itself looks brilliant – have a whole load more lights been added this year?

The event was rounded off with some mulled wine and a delicious mince pie.

Following the lights switch on, we headed over to the ACCA for the Staff Christmas Social. On arrival, we were directed to find ourselves a silly hat and enjoy a glass of something bubbly. We picked out our preferred ridiculous hat, then wandered into the bar for some drinks and nibbles.

The atmosphere was excellent, with plenty of mingling and laughing. There was a fancy dress competition, which was won by a perfectly-dressed elf (Dizz from Payroll and Pensions).

The event truly livened up with a visit from Father Christmas himself – jingling his bells and handing out gifts to all the good girls and boys (and also me). After getting our little treat from Mr Claus, we carried on drinking and having fun until the end of the evening.

We even managed to find time to get a quick selfie of the team in our festive hats (see below).

Matt’s Christmas Jumper

My bizarre maths and physics Christmas jumper usually raises a few questions, so I made this handy little ThingLink image to explain what it actually says!

Thanks to the Technology Enhanced Learning team for their excellent blog post which inspired me to use ThingLink.

Season’s Greetings

I guess the only thing left to say is Nadolig Llawen, Nollaig Shona Dhuit, Feliz Navidad, Srozhdestovm Kristovim, Buon Natale, Froehliche Weihnachten, Joyeux Noël, Glædelig Jul, Natale hilare and MERRY CHRISTMAS!*

*Merry Christmas in Welsh, Irish, Spanish, Russian, Italian, German, French, Danish and Afrikaans.