Amid the holiday hustle, Oviedo celebrates with a 15-minute party

When the phone started ringing on the other end, there was less than 40 minutes left before the holiday party started and one of the hosts wasn’t even on her way yet. Alan Ott, wearing a Christmas light bulb necklace and red buffalo plaid shirt, hung up the phone at 2:50 p.m. Tuesday standing in an empty room. Nothing had been decorated yet. No food, no drinks, no candy canes. None of it. 

But that was kind of the point. 

“Last year I got here only 15 minutes before it started, and it felt like a bit of a rush,” Ott said. He’s normally an Oviedo City Councilman, but today he’s a high-speed party planner in the middle of Oviedo City Hall. Very high speed. 

“15 minutes is all you need for a dadgum Christmas party,” U.S. Rep. Tim Burchett, (R-Tenn), said on social media Dec. 11, ahead of his own party this year, about 842 miles north. Burchett’s first 15-minute Christmas party quietly kicked off near the U.S. Capitol in 2022. Ott, who launched Oviedo’s first 15-minute party last year, took his inspiration from a news story he read about it. 

Minutes ahead of the doors opening, Burchett this year famously had a line down the hallway, packing it wall-to-wall, to get into his party, broadcast on NBC and other networks. 

For Ott, in his second year co-planning his own party, things began in earnest at 2:50 p.m. with armfuls of decorations brought from home, or what his wife, Sam, could find at stores. Oviedo Mayor Megan Sladek brought Rice Krispies treats, cookies and soda. 

“The only thing here that’s [the city’s] is the tape,” Ott said. And the tape isn’t even red. 

The clock was ticking. With 13 minutes left until party time, the frilly gold garlands, ornaments and stuffed festive creatures were lining up on dais wood. The water in the big electric thermos was heating up as a lady with graying brown hair and a sweater with some sort of red horned animal on the front, part moose, part deer, quietly sauntered in and sat down in a chair. She was early. Too early. This party might be for anybody who wants to come, but it isn’t for early people. 

“It’s a very different atmosphere,” Oviedo attorney and first gentleman of Oviedo Paul Sladek, in a shirt and tie and an appropriately red sweater, said. 

It started at almost exactly 3:30 p.m. 3:28, to be exact. The water for the chocolate was almost hot enough by then. Then everything starts flowing all at once. Partygoers in pantsuits and residents in red stocking caps line up for desserts, grab one or two, then split off. An Oviedo police officer eyes a cookie tray, then moves in quickly. Groups of two or three mingle, then break away. The room sits 48, but all but a few are empty. The few dozen guests milling about in the room are moving too briskly to sit down.  

It’s a unique idea, resident Sam Nasser said. 

“This is a nice touch, you know?” Nasser said. “How do you connect with the community? You have to make something, and this is a good occasion.” 

The conversations around the room are necessarily brief. Deputy Mayor Natalie Teuchert mingles near the doors. Ott flits between groups, pausing for a moment then moving on. Megan Sladek does the same. 

“It’s just right,” she said of the party amid all of the bustle of the holidays, with Oviedo itself coming off a big holiday weekend culminating in Chanukah in the Park Monday. “It’s chaos right now. This is all anyone can handle, 15 minutes. The planning is so much faster. The party itself, kids can make it through the whole thing with their grownups.” 

Off to the side, a 7-year-old girl in a red and green shirt with candy cane sleeves makes short work of a small hoard of cookies. It’s all quick, all purposeful, and all over in a quarter of an hour. 

“The setup and breakdown are going to take longer than the party,” Ott said. By the end he’s even worked up a little of a sweat. In less than 20 minutes the room temperature, amid a bustling soiree, has already risen three degrees. 

City Manager Bryan Cobb, who’s served on Oviedo’s city staff for more than two decades, was mid-conversation, and mid-bite, over near the mayor’s seat when the clock struck 3:45 p.m., All talk stopped suddenly, overwhelmed by singing that burst spontaneously from the front of the room, first one voice, then two, then 10. “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” did a speedrun through just one chorus before the clock ran out. Just enough time to race to grab one more cookie with snowman icing on top. 

That was almost it. With a Merry Christmas, see you next year. 

“I’ve never been kicked out of a holiday party quite the same,” Paul Sladek would say after the singing stopped.

But as the volume on that holiday classic began to fall, the Mayor stopped looking at the clock on the wall and looked at the gathered crowd, her own voice rising higher for one more chorus, one last fleeting moment of cheer.