We still can’t get over the spread management laid out for us Pollstar.com employees on Christmas day. It was the party to end all parties. It was the celebration of… of… of the millennium!

As you probably already know, all of us workers at Pollstar.com held fast to the federal law requiring all tour-date researchers to man their posts during the holidays in order to monitor the constant flow of concert data to the public. After all, it wouldn’t be a very merry Christmas if Judas Priest or Yanni released new dates on December 25 and we didn’t post them immediately because we were off spending time with friends and family. That’s why the entire Pollstar.com workforce, all 9,591 of us, were on duty over the weekend.

But that’s not to say that management didn’t go out of its way to make us feel at home. Yes, even though we were “on the job” as we manned the tour date engine in order to pump out date, city and venue for all of your concert favorites, like Elton John and Green Day, our bosses went out of their way to ensure that Christmas 2004 would be a Christmas to remember.

So, on Christmas morning, management allowed us to take a break from handling dates for Harry Connick Jr., and sorting venues for the Finn Brothers and Asia, so that we, too, could partake in some Christmas cheer.

You should have seen it! Management ushered us inside the magnificent Pollstar.com grand ballroom, where we saw the tallest Christmas tree we had ever laid eyes upon. Reaching up towards the ballroom’s roof, it was 572 feet of glorious northern pine, glittering and sparkling like a Cher concert.

And the presents! They were piled almost has high as the tree itself! Hundreds, no, make that thousands of gift wrapped boxes, filled with wonder and excitement, with wrapping paper, ribbons and bows safeguarding the contents of each and every gift. Truly a king’s ransom in presents!

Needless to say, all of us employees were overwhelmed with emotion. To think that management could set aside some time from the processing of tour info for acts like the Go-Go’s and Gov’t Mule so that the employees could partake in a little Christmas cheer was something we hadn’t foreseen for this holiday season. But there we were, all crowded around the tree, awestruck at all the gifts, presents and goodies that St. Nick had delivered.

Then the magical moment arrived. Our CEO and president, Eb Pollstar, the great-grandson of our founder, Festus Pollstar, said a few words about how he was personally proud of every single Pollstar.com employee, and that he wanted to share with us all the joy and glad tidings that Christmas had to offer. He was quite a sight, hefting those packages and shaking those boxes as he told us that Christmas is a special time of year – not only for mega-rich CEOs of concert-data Web sites, but also for all the men and women that make those Web sites possible.

Imagine! All those gifts. All those presents! All that wrapping paper! Man, oh, man we were excited as Pollstar.com management let us take a break from entering dates for bands like Duran Duran and Erasure so that we could watch them open all of their Christmas presents.

In fact, it was almost as exciting as the next day. That’s when management let us watch them go back to the stores and return the gifts for things that they really wanted. Is this a great job or what?