The Christmas knees-up eh? At this time of the year, the bustling howfs, eateries and establishments of rambunctious mirth tend to be overflowing with the kind of rampant, deviant decadence that would have had Nero tut-tutting like some disapproving maths teacher peering over his spectacles at an unruly scamp pinging bits of chewing gum around the classroom with a bendy ruler.

Someone gleefully informed me recently that their own gluttonous, excessive office do involved liberal lashings of promiscuity, which I thought was fizzy wine and so responded by saying I would’ve needed a mouthful of Bisodol to temper the heartburn. As you can tell, this correspondent prefers a more tranquil, slower-paced scene and here at The Herald, our sports desk’s annual assembly was a gentle, glass-clinking exercise in sophisticated decorum and cultured conversation. Well, I think it was but I couldn’t hear a word of these erudite exchanges because of the din generated by the chief football writer slurping his linguine.

With the party season in full cry, it’s also that time of the year when an ornate silver plated four-turret lens camera on a plinth gets everybody into a frightful fankle. Back in those halcyon days of yore, the BBC Sports Personality of the Year was a fairly modest, dignified affair. It was all neatly pressed shirts, gently lacquered hair, appreciative ripples of applause and a bit of reserved refinement. Nowadays, like many events, it’s a strobe-light flashing, music thumping carnival of barrel-scraping gaudiness. Remember when Lewis Hamilton turned up on the red carpet a couple of years ago with his bloomin’ dog? Nonsense.

Of course, in these times of constant racket, whooping, hollering, shrieking and bawling, you’re not allowed to go to anything now without fun, enjoyment and a sense of occasion being rammed down your thrapple with all the drooling frenzy of Sawney Bean embarking on routine acts of cannibalism.

I’m not sure at what point in my life a sense of mumbling irritation crept into my unsuspecting body but once you cross the Rubicon of 40, it definitely comes with an added air of grumbling fustiness. In this respect, one was intrigued to hear news coming out of the annual HSBC Golf Forum in China last week that the latest development to give the game a shot in the arm is to have music being belted out as players take to the tee and warm up on the range at January’s Abu Dhabi Championship.

Personally, this scribe always thought someone like good old Monty came with his own variety of soundtracks anyway. There was, for instance, the haunting, sombre meander of Requiem Mass in D Minor after he’d just dribbled a two-footer past the hole on the last to miss the cut by a shot. And, as the gathering of golf writers girded their loins by the 18th and braced themselves to ask him for a quick word in the fuming aftermath, the tumultuous strains of the Ride of the Valkyries would build to a furious crescendo as a seething Montgomerie thundered straight by like a locomotive with a cow catcher mowing through a herd of dazed cattle.

In the last few months, the European Tour, with the energetic chief executive Keith Pelley at the forefront, has experimented with a variety of ideas aimed at giving the game a bit of snazzy pizzazz. There was night golf under the lights and a short-hole challenge with the fireworks going off as players hit their balls. Next season there will be a new event in Australia that will contain a six-hole matchplay element and a 90 metre knock-out hole. Of course, it’s probably typical of golf that, on one hand, we knock the game for its refusal to adapt and innovate in a changing world and, on the other, snigger and snort when someone like Pelley actually comes along with a new, let’s-give-it-a-go attitude. ‘Twas ever thus.

The basic problems of golf in the wider sense remain those old chestnuts of expense and time. The creation of this ubiquitous ‘party atmosphere’ and introducing golfers like darts players taking to the oche won’t do much to change things on that front. The first tee of September’s Ryder Cup at uproarious Hazeltine had huge screens urging fans to ‘make some noise’ and look what the fall-out of that was?

I don’t want to sound like some crabbit old colonel – although I am sounding like one - but in a loud, hectic, look-at-me modern world with little appreciation of quality, substance and a bit of reserved, understated class, blaring music will just be another example of the tacky crassness that we apparently seem to revel in at various sporting occasions.

But, hey, that’s progress for you. And on that note, I’m off to meet my auld pal, Scrooge.