PAYING for your holiday party? haha no, that's money better spent vandalizing the house where your boss lives
Literally just say directly "I already find this kind of thing weird and silly and I certainly don't want to pay to feel uncomfortable for several hours"
This is especially true if you've read the room and believe everyone else feels the same way. In situations like this the crowd lacks confidence and are waiting and wanting someone to step up and voice their concerns.
My work keeps trying to push us to log in before work for a "chill time" session every other week or so where we play dumbass guessing games over video. It's literally the only meeting invite where I click "Decline Invitation" every time.
You log in for 7 minutes and then download some huge file so your internet slows down and gets choppy and then you just disconnect and send them a text 25 mins later saying the internet went down
Drop without explanation 5 minutes in, then the following day send an email apologizing for your untimely internet outage.
"oh whoops i just spilled eggnog all over my computer,static ah geez its frying up static"
