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Is New Year’s Eve the Worst Holiday?
As a kid, New Year’s Eve fascinated me. It was a night when grown-ups dressed up, drank fancy cocktails and danced across ballroom floors. Granted, my parents only went out a time or two, but I had seen the movies. Most adults had the times of their lives and I couldn’t wait to join them.
Once I hit drinking age, I spent several New Year’s Eves at college bars or block parties trying to join the excitement. I rarely found any. Most the celebrations were overcrowded nightmares of sweaty throngs and queasy drinkers. Hardly the tuxedo-clad soirees I had imagined as a lad.
Eventually I figured out why I didn’t care for New Year’s celebrations: They are filled with people who say “WOOO!” I don’t like being in places where people say “WOOO!” The revelers aren’t actually having fun, but trying to convince everyone around them that they’re having fun.
Like a weekend in Las Vegas, most NYE revelers are trying to force themselves to have a good time and failing. And what are we even celebrating? An arbitrary hour on an arbitrary calendar first accepted in the U.S. in 1752. There aren’t even any presents.
Tonight I’ll enjoy another quiet evening in, playing board games with the family and watching queasy drinkers shout “WOOO!” on the TV. I’m confident that many readers will roll their eyes at grumpy introverts like me and enjoy far more exciting celebrations. What do you think: Is New Year’s Eve overrated or do you have an evening planned that will change my mind?
New Year’s image via Shutterstock.
Published in General
But I think the song that best evokes the spirit of NYE is this one by Nat King Cole. ·1 hour ago
Nat nails it.
I grew up in Hawaii where new year’s eve is (was) filled with firecrackers and fireworks of all kinds. Made for a very exciting night of burned fingers and deaf ears. Great Parties all the time.
Now in California with kids, I do my best. Last night we stopped in Chinatown in San Francisco and got sparklers, spinners and some fountains so my kids can have some of the same excitement. I just hope my fire captain neighbor is not at home. We do a “New York” New Years Eve with some friends and relatives and start the party at 6 Pacific time and celebrate at 9 PST and are in bed by 10:30. Same fun, more civilized bed time.
Agree!!! A totally overblown holiday.
I have mixed emotions about New Year’s and it almost always has a underlying tone of melancholia. Note: I am not a Debbie Downer normally, but this holiday is not my favorite. Seven years ago, we were struggling with the decision to remove life support for my Mom, who had suffered a massive stroke two weeks before (she passed on January 2). Since that time, I have thought about those difficult days every New Year. Last year, I came down with the seasonal Norovirus just as the evening plans at home began (got a head start on my weight loss resolution) . Many years ago we celebrated at a resort on Kauai and watched the fireworks show and then found out the next day that a fireman supporting the show died and several others were seriously injured when some fireworks detonated prematurely. In 1999, we bought expensive theater and party tickets and DH spent the entire evening worrying about Y2K blowing up systems at his company and talking to people on his brick cell phone (he was an IT lead). We usually do the same old thing (dinner, wine at home) and will probably watch “Return of the King”.
When New Year’s Day falls on a Thursday, a Friday, a Saturday, a Sunday, or a Monday, we usually have a bunch of folks over for lunch. When that happens, I usually spend a good part of New Year’s eve preparing collards, country ham, and black-eyed peas for brunch on New Year’s Day while watching college football.
When New Years’ Day falls in the middle of the week, we usually limit ourselves to watching football as long as we can stay awake (usually until about 10:00).
This year I have some particular interest in the Chick-Fil-A Bowl, so it is likely I will stay awake a little later than usual.
I miss this. A lot. Tasty perk.
Happy New Year to our Ricochet friends. ·3 hours ago
My parents used to do it up big time on New Years. It started with cocktails, canapes and pics at my house. My dad would take a photo every couple, an amazing historical progression over the years. The hairdos alone tell the story. Then off to a dance somewhere – the Legion Hall, the Italian American Club, The Polish American Club. My mom was an amazing athlete and a great dancer. My dad kept up. The evening would end at someone’s hose for an early breakfast with Bloody Mary’s. New Year’s day was of course, a day of the living dead. Those were the days when a cop would take your keys and call you taxi if you were sotted.
Our post DUI apocalypse festivities are far less interesting. We party with neighbors to limit the offense to WUI. This usually involves a righteous punch, party hats, nibbles, Chinese take-out, noisemakers, sparklers, Karaoke, the countdown, cigars on the patio, and general revelry. It ends just after midnight. I need to remind myself to take four Advils and drink lots of water before hit the pillow. 50-50 I’ll remember.
New Year’s Eve is one of my least favorite holidays, though I would put it ahead of Labor Day.
I don’t hate it. But it doesn’t inspire. If it were cancelled I’d not mourn its absence.
This sounds like a GREAT NYE to me! (Scary extrovert that I am)
The key is to put out the Advil and a bottle of water on the pillow before you leave.
In Sydney it’s after lunch on New Year’s Day and From this vantage point, I have more data. Jon Gabriel is exactly right! How much of life, especially adolescent life, consists of trying to pass off “expensive tedium” as pleasure, to oneself and to others. A good deal of maturing is the dropping-away of these pretenses.
New Years falls somewhere between Presidents Day and Arbor Day in terms of pointlessness.
My tradition is to make sure I fall asleep before midnight.
Jon, you are right; this is the worst holiday. It is a celebration of binge-drinking.
There is a whole culture behind small clubs like this, and members have rediscovered a genteel, elegant form of celebration that is well worth the effort. Sort of like Ricochet with dancing shoes. ·5 minutes ago
Now that is a New Year’s Eve party I would attend. ·19 hours ago
Me too! I’m jealous! Happy happy everyone!
We tavern wits used to call New Year’s Eve amateur’s night and disdained participation. I liked to listen to the distant fireworks and the pots and pans pounded closer to home and feel the anticipatory schadenfreude at the hangovers being created with such enthusiasm. Then I rolled over and resumed my slumbers.
We curl up on the couch with Chinese takeout and Marx Brothers movies. Best holiday evah!
Well stated, sir.
I failed in my tradition last night. My neighbors had a party, it was a warm night and I was awoken by people yelling, “WOOO!”
New Year’s Eve has always seemed like a “manufactured” celebration. It has the misfortune to fall exactly one week after Christmas Eve, a true celebration of the greatest event in history. Maybe New Year’s would feel different if it was celebrated in August with no competition.
Tonight’s new years eve?? I had better check my mailbox. Maybe I got an invitation to someone’s party.
Hello in there!
“I already know nobody likes me. Why do we need a holiday season to emphasize it?”
I get a day off and maybe we have a party. What do I care if it isn’t “meaningful?”
I’ll have a couple drinks, kiss the wife … then I’ll probably go back to playing Splinter Cell. For me, that’s all I need.
If you are spending it with that bird in the picture, it wouldn’t be overrated at all.
My father used to call it amateur’s night. I actually use the holiday to reflect back on the past year, what I’ve accomplished, major events, etc. I don’t however celebrate the way most people do.
Some fascinating history of the day here. Here’s the start:
“In 46 or 45 BCE, the Roman emperor Julius Caesar established January 1 as New Year’s Day even as he introduced a new calendar that was far more accurate than the one Rome had been using up to that point. The old calendar had only 304 days, divided among only ten months. Not good if you want to concord solar and lunar cycles, or have years that are roughly symmetrical astronomically from one to the next. Ceasar named January after the Roman god of doors and gates, Janus, who had two faces, one looking forward and one looking backward. This was a terrific idea.
Before long, Roman pagans began marking December 31 with drunken orgies. They rationalized their debauchery by claiming that it constituted a solemn re-enactment of the chaotic void (andrelomosia, in the original Greek) that existed before the gods brought order to the cosmos. Even way back then, people made up excuses to party hard and have sex with people whose names weren’t particularly important at the time. It’s good to know that some things don’t change. . . .”
I kinda like New Year’s Eve, as a holiday without many responsibilities. Christmas and Easter both require some degree of spiritual effort, Halloween is taken just way too seriously by too many people, rememberance days have some sadness mixed in…
We generally don’t put a lot of effort into holidays. We have a set of traditional foods we’ll be eating (chili, Texas caviar, Velveeta cheese stuff), watch some music that I avoid for the rest of the year, and generally hang out.
Same here in AK with the fireworks. They are pretty worthless on the 4th of July, only a few days after the solstice when it never gets totally dark, so New Years Eve is the big fireworks holiday. But other than watching the neighbors’ displays, our evening was pretty low key. It’s never been a big deal to me.
Start your own big guy!
I’d accept an invitation to such a party, in tux with classy music and good conversation, in a New York minute. New Year’s Eve has deteriorated to let’s drink until almost midnight so some B- or C+ name tells everyone its time to watch the ball drop in Times Square, then the old geezers go to bed, the young people organize into small groups and head for the exits for whatever they want to do, and sports guys are lost because the spectacle of six great college bowl games to switch back and forth on has now deteriorated into one network running three or four minor bowls and one big bowl so they can supposedly get big audience share for a week.
We let it go lame. time to take it back!
A few years ago, my wife and I decided to cease attending New Year’s Eve events and instead host an annual New Year’s Day brunch. This year, we invited three families. The kids watched movies in the basement, and the eight adults talked, listened to music, played games, and imbibed from about noon to nine. (Moderately. But that didn’t prevent me from having a moderate hangover this morning.)
I spent quite a few years as a musician and was always working on New Years Eve. From my stage eye view Mr. Gabriel is spot on the money. Forced gaiety, amateur drunks, and of course, the WOOO-WOOO girls. Once I stopped gigging in the mid-eighties I never went out on New Years Eve again.