I would think good pay and interesting work are going to rank significantly higher than a company holiday party. I would probably rank it somewhere around quality of note pads and paper clips and definitely below quality of pens in the supply cabinet.
That’s not to say I don’t enjoy our holiday parties. But we also do it on company time.
We will go to the company hoilday party, but only stay a couple hours. Basically dinner, a little talking after. We’re not sticking around for the live music and dancing, or whatever act got hired to perform. Still enough time to get out and see people we want to see, enough time to see who’s going to be blitzed out of their mind before the end of the night, not so long that we have to be around them. If that means we miss out on end-of-the-night prizes, cool.
It’s the decision of our department of about 40 people. It’s at a big site that has lots of entertainment options, and we will “own” a room with seating for meals and 6 lanes for the afternoon. In all my life I’ve never been to a holiday party where people consumed anything more than a couple of beers.
Depending on the person, Christmas parties can be fun or “well, we have to pay a babysitter and I guess we’ll tackle that home improvement on Sunday… let’s get this over with”.
Because typically, Christmas parties and the like are barely “optional”, like if you’re out on PTO maybe it’s okay to skip.
Edit: I take back any criticism for “party during work hours” as long as it doesn’t mean work piles up. Those are great and keep me retained.
This is possible?
It is rare, but there are managers who keep workloads at capacity instead of 20% over it.
Problem is that it only caters for groups up to 50 for corporate parties.
Thats too small a venue for us.
This joint seems to be able to handle a larger crowd!!! 
Last year, I attended a holiday shindig for folks in my department here:
This year is the “off year” so it’s employees-only, “after work hours” which is really “we’re ending the day early for the party.”
I’ll probably go. Probably won’t stay the whole time, though.