Glad you asked, everyone! People tend to think this is not something they need put much thought into. Just that dress from French Connection two years ago and some lip gloss, right? That’ll do!

In fact, dressing for the office Christmas party is probably the trickiest fashion quandary you’ll face all year. All outfits send a message. Some say: “Yes, I might be a middle-aged man, but have you seen my skinny black jeans? These have never seen the inside of a B&Q, I can tell you, mate! I’m all about the clubbing!” Others say: “Hello, I like to hibernate from November to March. Yes, I am in my pyjamas at 1pm on a Wednesday, what’s your point?” (See question below.)

With an office party, you need your outfit to make so many conflicting statements that we can only start to grasp what is needed by laying them all out. Here is what you need your outfit to say: “Hi! I’m actually surprisingly attractive, aren’t I? And you always thought I was just a mousey office person. But I’m not attractive in a now-you-want-to-sleep-with-me way, because that would be really awkward in the office. No, it’s more of a fun and funny but definitely-out-of-your-league way, so that you’re now nicer to me at work and maybe feel a little wistful when you think of me, but you know you could never, ever try it on with me. I’m like your mate’s really hot partner, right? Think of me like that. Also, I’m a lot more interesting than you thought, aren’t I? This outfit shows someone with secret depths of creativity, someone who is a little more woke, a little more on it than you thought. It’s the kind of outfit worn by someone who gets invited to secret midnight gigs, which is totally how I spend my evenings after you see me leave the office, not just sitting on my sofa wishing Bake Off was on. No, never. You respect me more now, don’t you?”

For men, this means a suit that actually fits; for women, this means a dress that isn’t two years old and from French Connection. That’s the other thing about office parties: the message is tricky, but the bar is pretty low.

Look, for the record, I really did try, OK? Because I, along with everyone else, got the memo sent to every columnist in Britain that the topic this season was something called “hygge” and that it was absolutely essential we treat it as an actual thing, under pain of losing our lofty status as opinion churners for hire. Sure, a couple of other things were happening this year that we could have written about – something in the political world, I think? – but hygge was the big one, the issue on which we absolutely must express opinions. To the laptop!

Yet two months have passed since the hygge klaxon went out and still, from me, nothing. I know! It makes no sense. I once wrote 4,000 words for a fashion magazine about how a store moved its shoe rack from one end of the store to the other. Surely I, of all people, could conjure up some kind of excitement/outrage/bigger meaning about hygge? No, I could not.

I get that hygge is a real thing in Denmark. I also get that clever, good writers are writing books about it. But, try as I genuinely do, I cannot see hygge as anything other than Danish for “choosing to be cosy instead of miserable and uncomfortable”. You know what? I think I’ve got that down pat already. Perhaps my fellow columnists have heretofore been living in the kind of photogenic but clearly horrible modern houses you see in fashion magazines’ homes spreads, all chrome and corners and bare, slate-grey floors on which they click about with their pointy-toed stilettos. The sort of homes with sofas as hard as boards and cupboards you can’t open because door handles are verboten. I, on the other hand, am au fait with the concept of getting into one’s pyjamas, ideally by 3pm in the winter, lighting a fire, inviting friends over and settling down with a giant pot of macaroni cheese. My friends are so used to seeing me in my pyjamas that, when one of them saw me in a dress recently, he was genuinely concerned that someone had died.

So, trying to be excited/outraged about hygge feels like attempting to stir an emotion about air, water or anything else that is just “the stuff of life” to me. I mean, thanks for validating my lifestyle choice of staying home, eating chocolate and wearing socks – I raise my hot water bottle in appreciation. But, seriously, does anyone live differently? This smacks of a trend that exists purely to sell to people things they already have. But that’s absurd – fashion would never do that.

So, I’m sorry. I appreciate that this will result in my invitation to the columnists’ Christmas party being revoked. I might even have my name removed from the Columnists’ Golden Charter, meaning – Oh, cruel world! – I’ll never appear on Have I Got News for You or Question Time. But I must live my truth. As Tony Blair said, albeit possibly not about hygge, I am the insurgent now.