Alone, together: What it’s like to bartend on Christmas in Seattle

For the last 15 years, since he started tending bar, Travis Sanders worked on Christmas.

While most of America cozies in with their nearest and dearest, Sanders pours drinks for the people too far from their families – physically or emotionally – to visit. But Sanders, currently the beverage director for the Hotel Sorrento on Seattle's First Hill, says he loves the community that forms in a bar on Christmas.

“Everyone’s friendly and jovial, they have no problem talking to each other, they're making new friends,” he describes. “People are buying each other drinks because it's Christmas and everybody’s kind of in that same spot, especially in a hotel bar.”

This year, Sanders looks forward to a little extra celebration – for himself, in his first year at the Hotel Sorrento, and for everyone just in need of a little festivity.

Leading up to Christmas, Sanders likes the feel of working in a hotel bar: the decorations, and the tradition. He hears from customers who come in every year for a drink with a certain friend this time of year, or families by the dozen. “I love [the Sorrento] because of the history.” Aside from the all-out holiday decorations, it means that he talks to people who used to work at the hotel and stop by, or to people whose grandparents always stayed there. “I'm born and raised Seattle,” he says, so he loves showing off the city and recommending his favorite places to eat, drink, and visit, to people here for the first time.

This year at Christmas, he expects to see more of the same pattern he’s seen all year. “Halloween, Thanksgiving, people wanted to celebrate,” he noticed. “They wanted to come out, they wanted to spend money, going for like the really expensive whiskeys and nice cognacs,” he says. And he and his team have prepared just the kind of festive menu people are looking for, with a whiskey sour made with a housemade gingerbread cookie syrup.

“People are looking for that kitschy holiday vibe,” he says – and they can barely keep up with the demand for eggnog and mulled wine.

But on the actual day of Christmas, the feel of a bar completely changes, according to Sanders. A few people come in early in the day for a drink before they head to see their family, and a few stragglers come by afterward, but the bulk of visitors are the people he calls orphans, often other people who work in the restaurant and bar industry. “A rag tag family just kind of naturally forms. Even though people don't know each other, it still turns into that kind of ‘family hanging out aspect,’ everyone laughing and having fun.”

More than anything, Sanders notes that most of the people in a bar on Christmas aren’t there because they lack the holiday spirit or eschew the festivity. “It’s like, ‘I'm still gonna celebrate even though I'm sitting in a bar and I don't know anyone.’”

Before joining the team at the Sorrento, Sanders worked at the Kimpton’s restaurant and bar – Shaker & Spear and Pennyroyal – and Mulleady’s, which isn’t a hotel bar, but remains open on Christmas. Before that, he worked at a dive bar, and one year on Christmas, a customer realized that it was getting late, there was no food there, and none of the nearby restaurants were open. “This guy just ordered like five or six pizzas delivered to the bar and shared with everyone.” And one of Sanders’s regulars that know he’s working always makes a point to bring him a little plate of turkey, ham, and stuffing, from their traditional meal, so he doesn’t miss out on the classic holiday fare.