The Boston Globe has an article today about a man who plays Santa Claus every year. Apparently, due to the scary specter of recession (more on that here), companies have been cutting back on Christmas parties this year. And that doesn’t mean good things for the man who would be Santa Claus:

Business has been especially bad for Donald Wetherby, 57, a Montgomery, Vt., truck driver who makes about $400 each holiday season playing the big guy from the North Pole for weekend parties. So far, he only has two bookings this year, compared with eight this time last year.

“Even if it is Christmas,” Wetherby said, “Times are hard anyway, so people don’t got a lot of money.”

The Christmas party cutbacks are happening in a lot of places. The Rocky Mountain News says one in every five companies are cutting back on Christmas parties. They have to save money every where they can, they say.

This is stupid.

First of all, your company would have to be in pretty weird economic shape for the Christmas party to really make a dent in your year-end financial figures. I know these sorts of things can get pretty pricey at larger organization, but larger organizations also tend to have larger revenues. I’d be shocked — so much so that I might keel over and die — if I ever heard about an organization that spent more than a fraction of a percent on their annual bash. Fiscally speaking, it’s unlikely to make a huge difference either way.

These kinds of cuts are BS because they’re never really about the bottom line. They’re about making middle-management feel good about themselves. They’re about bean-counters who can’t ever understand why a business would “throw money away” on something as trivial as a party for its workers anyway.

They’re about people who don’t understand the connection between actually doing nice things for your employees and the increased productivity that follows.