As 2005 slides away…
I don’t much care for New Year’s Eve as a holiday. I can see why it resonates with people. I feel like it ought to resonate with me. People like boundaries, transitions. We should actually have more such rituals in our lives, more crossings from one state to the next but the absence of other celebrations, we’ll take the quick stepping over from one year to the next. A new year that we haven’t fouled up yet. A year we can make red-letter, best ever, you betcha. Pass the champagne, make a resolution and kiss me quickly before the time passes.
Problem is that New Year’s Eve suffers (as does Christmas) from overhype. If Christmas is family then New Year’s is friends so you’d better have a good party, a great party to go to or what does that say about you? Where’s your party hat, silver streamers and satin dress? Where’s your humorous anecdote Where’s your date (kiss kiss darling, stroke of midnight)? Where are you going to be?
I’m not buying in. Don’t like random measurements of friendship or fun. Much rather have fun at four thirty in the afternoon than be press ganged into some requisite display of fun-ness. Anyway, you can’t build something like that up so much without leaving a lot of people feeling gypped and where’s the fun in that? Where’s the fun in wondering whether you’re having enough fun?
Actually, what I like most about New Year’s Eve is calling our friends in different countries as their year changes over. I like the mild disconnect in saying hello to someone who’s already in next year. Like talking to the future. And I won’t object if someone thrusts champagne at me (but I’d almost never object to that).
Still, I had a bath tonight in hot pink water (thanks to a Lush bath bomb), and who can feel unfestive after that? Not sure that anything tomorrow night has to offer can top a huge fizzy pink and purple ball hurtling round the tub, a couple of chocolates from Christmas and a Terry Pratchett novel.
And yes, that is an actual photo of the actual bath water. Honestly.
I’ve never been fond of New Year’s either. I sarcastically said to my partner, “Yeah, its the new year. Time to change the calendar”. I do celebrate the Vietnamese New Year, but that holiday comes with a long line of tradition and meaning. The Western New Year seems like a time to get drunk (and a lot of people drive too – that’s why I stay home).