Stoke Travel’s Guide To Drinking Through The Silly Season

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It’s called the silly season because you’re going to get shitfaced for a week, make a jerk of yourself, and there’s nothing you can do to avoid it. From Christmas time to New Year’s Eve, and hiccuping through the intoxicated days in between, you’re going to be drunk more often than not and to be honest that’s just fine, perfect and completely deserved.

Obviously here at Stoke Travel, home of the €10 a day, all you can drink, open bar at essentially all of our destinations, we’re experts on all things boozing long term. We figured who better to advise you through this outrageous time of the year, because we want you to make the most out of these very soggy days.  

The weekend before Christmas Eve — don’t jump the gun

So 2018 is one of those years where you’re going to get fucked right up because you’ve got two full weekend nights, and one day, before Christmas Eve even starts. This is very dangerous. The last Friday night before Christmas is traditionally known as the most excited night of the year, and we all know that excitement means bad (wonderful) decisions. There’s no point telling you to hold off until Christmas Eve, because you’re just not going to do that, but you’re going to have to push through from here in on, so be aware that any choices you make now will have repercussions tomorrow and that repercussion will be that you’ll have to back it up and go again, and again, and so on. It’s best now to get into the habit of starting your day with a coffee and Baileys, and favourite of the Doozy Bros coffee cart that you’ve seen at our events.

Christmas Eve — the traditional re-ignition of the bridges

So traditionally Christmas Eve is one of the best of the year, because absolutely nobody has to work the next day, so traditional excuses for not getting lit are invalid. If you’re going home for the season, Christmas Eve represents a night when all your friends, family, the guys you nod to in the hallway at high school, etc, return to your hometown and fill up whatever shitty local watering hole you’ve got. This night is a real fun night if you can drink enough to avoid the boring, What have you been up to? line of small talk. What we suggest you do is find a quiet corner and start smashing tequila shots, just one after the other, maybe throwing in a beer to break up the onslaught after every fourth shot. Keep this up until you get drunk and abusive, so then when some geek from high school is like, Hey man, what have you been up to? for the hundredth time that night, you can be like, What have I been up to? Everything! But what the hell have you been up to, Joseph? Wasting your damn life on your stupid career like a slave to the system, Jason.

Christmas Day — surly Santa

So if you did Christmas Eve right you’ve woken up on Christmas Day loaded up with regret and maybe in your parents’ garden. Perfect! This is the perfect way to start your Christmas Day. Remember the coffee and Baileys you’ve been drinking since Saturday morning? Well today’s special, so sub them out for some more elaborate Bloody Marys, the ones with celery and bacon and plenty of hot sauce so you don’t down the concoction too quickly, this drink is supposed to perk you up, not black you out. The whole point of Christmas Day is to show your extended family just how much of a goddamn legend you are, and the best way to do that is to impress them with your drinking prowess. Start the day with a spring in your step, but always make sure you’re one level of intoxicated behind Aunty June. Aunty June is your pace car. That way you won’t make a buffoon of yourself until everybody else has, and by showing that you’ve got some mettle in the drinking realm will mean that when the lightweights are passed out, Uncle Phil will include you in the secretive “good Scotch” club that always goes down late at night at these kinds of events. We don’t usually suggest this, but playing it cool through Christmas can really yield some tasty rewards.

Boxing Day — sun’s out, fun’s in

Righto, so the whisky has given you a slight hangover so this morning you might want to punch your first beer with breakfast. Get it into you. Boxing Day is a day for the outdoors, either at your rich cousin’s place, or in a field with your bonehead pals. Now if you’re in the northern hemisphere you’re going to need a coat, but for those of you down south, get that rotten rig of yours out and start slapping shoulders. The best way to spend Boxing Day is to be the happiest/most annoying person at the party. Get your arm around some acquaintances and tell them how much you love them. Run out of beer and then start asking everyone for one of theirs. Piss your pants. Boxing Day is a really good day to get out in the great outdoors, get sunstroke, and generally make a knob of yourself.

The Purgatory — can’t stop, won’t stop

Now we enter that weird no-man’s land between Christmas and New Years. There’s no real point going back to work for this stretch, so take the time off and enjoy yourself, and there’s also no real point in sobering up, so enjoy yourself with more partying. A lot of people will use this time to do a roadtrip to wherever they’re spending New Year’s, others will just vegetate at their parents’ place and some will become permanent fixtures at the local pub. We suggest that through this time you try a different drinking style a day and really run with it. Maybe on the Wednesday become a wine connoisseur and spend your day swishing grape juice around your mouth, never spitting it out and flashing your red teeth at people while you lie about the different flavours in the wine. On Thursday, become a ginny, and get loaded up on G&Ts and talk to strangers about your feelings before breaking down at the end of the night in a sobbing heap. Fridays are for fighting, so hit the rums early and make sure they’re strong. You get the drift.  

New Year’s Eve — survival

We’ve said it once, and we’ll say it again, NYE is generally the worst night of the year. Too much excitement generally means massive let downs, and all the pubs, bars and clubs fill up with partying novices who clog up the service with their elaborate orders and slow decision making. You, on the other hand, are now essentially pickled in booze, so all you need is a little sniff of something alcoholic to be right rolling drunk again. We suggest you spend New Year’s outside, somewhere where you can take your own rocket fuel, a concoction of whatever booze you’ve got left, thereby skipping the horrible hordes and their stupid queues. By this point your mental state will be ragged at best, you’re essentially a hobo with your habits and we wouldn’t be surprised to see you sitting in a gutter leaking expletives at all and sundry, who will probably interpret them as expressions of goodwill, and thank you for spreading the merriment. All you have to do on New Year’s is survive until the clock clicks over to midnight, at which point you should make out with whatever piece of pavement you’re inhabiting and get some much needed sleep right then and there, among the puke and broken bottles, while all the goofballs makeout with each other, convinced they’re having the time of their lives.

If you want to have a really good New Year’s Eve, maybe the only decent one on the planet, then make sure you reserve your spot on our London-Edinburgh New Year’s Eve Party Train for this year’s Hogmanay celebrations. It’s the only way to round out a particularly taxing silly season.