I remember when I was younger, New Year was THE event of the year. It would be a time when I would import a girlfriend to bring home, just to go out at New Year. It was definitely the social highlight of the year. It was a time to drink and make merry, to really let your hair down.
A little bit of me thinks that part of the New Year magic died on 31st December 1999. The millenium celebrations erupted like some sort of social abcess and tried to out-do anything that had gone before. I feel that since then, the world has been trying to play catch-up to a feeling that they will never feel again in their lifetime.
Being a parent doesn't help. Wasting babysitting credit on New Year isn't always good value. We don't have a massive social circle and due to Christine's medical condition we aren't the best party animals. And to be honest, we're a little long in the tooth to do the trawling around town thing. We don't drink anymore so getting plastered at home is a non-starter. And the TV is reliably dreadful.
Its all a bit of a damp squib. One thing that this change of emphasis has done is to allow me to be a little more cirumspect about the entire affair. Whereas before I never made resolutions, nowadays I use the time as a milestone to plan things by. You get to thinking seriously about whether your lot is better this year than it was last year and what sort of a year you have had. You also get to thinking about what real positive steps you can take to effect change in your life. Last year I stopped drinking alcohol. This year .... who knows?
Maybe New Year hasn't stopped being important - maybe its actually become more important, just in a different way?
3 comments:
There is always a danger in these things that you put changes in how you view things onto others. I'm not sure New Year has diminished any post-Millenium across the whole of society. I'm there are many people out there for who it is still a major deal.
Personally, it's never been a main holiday for me. This is undoubtedly linked with the fact I don't drink and New Year being one an event linked with drink. So, it would either be a relatively ignored holiday (a Christmas-like dinner on New Year's day aside), or I'd find myself suffering a massive family gathering (my Dad's side), which was always painful.
So, New Year has never been that great. The possible exception was the period of time I was going to conventions, not so much the conventions, but the people I was with gave me reasons to do things on New Years eve. That is the exception rather than the rule.
I stayed in last night with the wife and got some chinese food in. With us (typically) the wifes shift work came into play, you can't exactly go out partying if you've got to be up at 6am for a job where having any sort of hangover etc just isn't done.
I thus had the wonderful night of having to wake my sleeping wife up 10 minutes before the fireworks on the TV and putting her to bed once they've finished.
So yes, I can fully understand looking back to my youth, when I used to party pretty hard on New Years Eve and wondering what the fuck happened to those days.
Oh well... :-(
D.
New Year was never a big night out for me. I always hated how busy and expensive it was and it would inevitably be a let down as the expectations of a great night would never be met.
I came to shun to going out on New Year and hanging out with friends which is what I did last night and a great time was had by all. Even if I did... I'm finding this so hard to type... even if I did play drums to 'Band on the Run'. I'm so ashamed.
Ben
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