In times of strife, should you hold a work Christmas party?

Getting the tone right for the staff Christmas party is particularly difficult in a year like this one. Many sectors that employ chemists have struggled with changing financial and political circumstances: national science funding cut has been cut in countries including the US and Australia; in the UK, several universities have announced plans to close or shrink their chemistry departments; pharmaceutical companies have delayed or cancelled planned expansions of their UK facilities. And across both academia and industry, large-scale redundancies have become more common, leaving the employees fortunate enough not to be made redundant to struggle with increased workloads – as well as the stress of not knowing whether their job will be next on the line.