New Years Eve

New Years Eve

The older I get the more I hate the holidays. This includes New Years Eve. But I will say, in its defense, somehow this ignorant excuse to drink seems to irritate me less than all other holidays. I find it hard to find anything tangible to grab onto, a reason to celebrate New Years Eve. History aside, there doesn’t seem to be any outright religious or otherwise sacred reason for our current celebration. The closest thing we have to a religious ceremony is a nice wholesome gathering for Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve with Ryan Seacrest. Something about that seems empty to me and I don’t think more booze can fill it. Each year I’m left wondering what are celebrating?

On December 31st we gather with a select group of friends, alienate other friends and loved ones by only texting them post the party’s climax, everyone congregates around the assorted party favors and mixers, patiently waiting for the ball to drop. Someone manages to get the room drinking heavily, crude jokes and insulting interpretations on modern dance begin, and everyone enjoys the conclusion to NBC’s New Year’s Eve with Carson Daly - a tradition since 2003. This past Thursday I went home to celebrate the new year and I remember thinking, as I started the empty three hour drive before me, I was going home not just to visit, but out of some sort of obligation to a holiday that I felt detached from.

So what exactly are we are celebrating? The end of one year or the beginning of the next? Are we saying goodbye to our poor habits and proclaiming with bold affirmation that we’re going change our ways because we want to? Or are we really just setting ourselves for failure? The ball drop changes nothing. Collecting New Year’s kisses like some out of work whore proves nothing. A stack of empty jello shots neither defines you as a person, rids you of the previous years sins, nor sets you up for success in the New Year. Instead, it puts you in a nice position for a hangover.

Once a year we all gather round and express our innate desire to party. Void of limitations we leap towards our desires and feed off of one another’s attention to carelessness, then get the idea that we go to sleep, wake up, and suddenly everything is better. I woke up on New Years Day and everything was still shit, just like I left it. I’m just not entirely convinced we all have that much will power, the will power to change overnight. I want to yell “Fools!” at everyone who is wildly optimistic about the New Year. The date you write on your check has little bearing on your happiness. 2010 isn’t an excuse to pretend 2009 didn’t exist, and it doesn’t suddenly make everything better. I know personally. Here it is 2010 and I’m still cleaning up the messes I made in 2009.

But what do I know? I’m the epitome of a scrooge. There is a brighter side to all of this. New Years is significant in the sense that it marks the end. The end of the holidays - the end of the coldest months of the year. Hell, the end of the last decade. Think about how far we have come as people in the last ten years. Ten years ago I was crouched by my computer scared that an American Flag screensaver might be a sign of the end of the world, listening to Will Smith’s “Will 2k”. I suppose this whole bit about celebrating can’t be all bad. After all, what’s wrong with a little hope, a nation wide injection of optimism. But, I still can’t help but feel like we shouldn’t be striding towards a miracle. Instead we should be striving towards realistic change. Don’t forget about last years ups and downs, remember them, just strive to surpass them. Make 2010 a good year, but don’t do it by discrediting the accomplishments of 2009.

The way I look at it is simple, the world is your oyster in 2010. Yes, anything is possible. But the symbolic changing of the calendar year doesn’t wipe your slate clean. You’ve got to pick up where 2009 left off and go from there.

-- Chad Forbregd

Looking for more holiday cheer?

Listen to “A Long December” by the Counting Crows.

Read Charles Bukowski:

“I could see the road ahead of me. I was poor and I was going to stay poor. But I didn’t particularly want money. I didn’t know what I wanted. Yes, I did. I wanted someplace to hide out, someplace where one didn’t have to do anything. The thought of being something didn’t only appall me, it sickened me … To do things, to be part of family picnics, Christmas, the 4th of July, Labor Day, Mother’s Day … was a man born just to endure those things and then die? I would rather be a dishwasher, return alone to a tiny room and drink myself to sleep.”

—Charles Bukowski, Ham on Rye, 1982

Still suffering from a hangover? Here’s the best hangover advice that’s been given to me: “Bourbon works as a hangover cure, but only for a while.”