New Year's Eve

Ten, Nine, Eight ...

For me, New Year's Eve used to be a time notoriously beset with angst. I used to hate New Year’s Eve until I openly confessed that I hated it. After many years of pretending to enjoy it, I finally made peace with the fact that New Year’s Eve did not automatically equate fun, and that these painfully awkward nights were nothing less than the epitome of forced fun.  Although I’ve always known what I wanted to be doing or where I’d enjoy myself more, time and again I have given in to social pressure and ended up doing the opposite. Granted, FOMO (fear of missing out) often caused me to be places where I really had no interest in being, but luckily, like everyone else, I grew out of these juvenile afflictions. It's called evolving; some people call it ‘getting old’.  

It was the inherent expectation that New Year’s Eve was the best night out of the year that I hated.  If New Year’s Eve turned out not to be the best night out of the year for you, then you were considered a loser. When you’re young, pretending comes natural and easy, and of course looking like a loser definitely lies at the bottom of not-cool barrel. But then, as you grow older and wiser, being a loser doesn’t seem so bad. Come to think of it, being not cool has become my new-age old age mantra. Even in the prehistoric pre-internet days (that’s when I was young), when one was not as intensively subject to the constant pressure of buying into things that you didn’t really want, let alone need, the pressure of partaking in an end of the year blow-out was an important expectant mental attitude of a champ.  

I really began being over New Year’s and the pressure to have a great time when I turned 40. Funny how things change when you turn 40. It’s as if something in you clicks and you don’t really give a hoot about what people think of you or what you do. Not that I became a condescending opinionated turkey the day I turned 40, but I did somewhat come into my own, knew more what I wanted and what I did not want, and basically had the nerve to tell people around me what I wanted and what I did not want. I once read that at age 20, we worry about what others think of us. At 40, we don't care what they think of us. At 60, we discover they haven't been thinking of us at all. So true.

Seven, Six, Five ...

Most if not all my experiences with New Year’s Eve revelries have turned out to be dull social gatherings as opposed to the apex of distracted pleasure parties that they were organized and promised to be. Most of the New Year’s parties I’ve been to, everyone was really really trying to look as if they were really really having fun, waiting really really patiently and really really anxiously for midnight so that they could jump up from their juiced up stupor and scream out the countdown to midnight as if at the stroke of 12, all the bad memories of the past year would be all but forgotten and their frail lives would be instantly launched off and rejuvenated to a new era, bringing with it a clean slate, after which they could finally go home and put themselves as well as those past 365 days to bed.  And we all know how there’s nothing worse than pretending you’re having a good time, when smiling feels like a chore, laughing a labour and conversation sheer torture. When you’re dancing but wish you were sitting down; sipping Champagne but really want to be polishing off a bottle of wine (alone); when you’re picking at minuscule smoked salmon blinis but dreaming of being stretched out on the sofa eating pizza, watching Extreme Couponing on the TLChannel, and perhaps during the commercial breaks, kind of reflect on the past year, but then quickly returning to and rejoicing with Gladys on TLC who just bought $752.52 worth of toothpaste for $19.68.

Four, Three, Two, One ...

Come to think of it, I was ‘over’ New Year’s Eve well before I turned 40. As a family it was never really something we celebrated in any real way. As a teenager I would go out with friends for the obligatory ‘best night out of the year’ but I always found the evening to be rather anti-climatic.  In my adult life, there have been some attempts at finding real fun at New Year’s Eve parties. Oh yes, I remember my last attempt, way back when I was a late twentysomething, right smack in the midst of my decade of naivety, still setting the table and not yet enjoying the feast of life. Madeleine and I were together then, but not quite an item, yet. Anyways, we had been talked into going to this New Year’s Eve shindig at the Scottish Cultural Centre in Vancouver by a friend of ours who had gotten these ‘really cheap’ tickets to this New Year's Eve party. Unbeknownst to us, this party was organized by the Royal Scottish Country Dance Seniors' Society. You did catch the word Seniors in there? Well, let me just say that between eating sheep's heart, liver and lung encased in it's stomach - I think its called haggis - and the onslaught of slobbering midnight snogs from all those 60+ year old Scottish seniors who took it upon themselves to wish us young'uns a happy new year, the evening did not go well.  Yup that did it for us… since that dribbling fateful night, Madeleine and I have been happy to enjoy a night of indulgent food and drink on our own, at home.

To us, December 31st is nothing more than a date in the calendar and we try not to invest the night with too much importance. Yes, it is the end of one year and the start of another, but by that time we’ve done most of our looking back and casting forward. I personally like the sense of the gravity of the turn of the year, the inevitable invitation to take stock of life, and the opportunity to tell those I love that I've treasured the year with them and look forward to another. There is some introspection happening, and as far as resolutions are concerned, I have never really been one for these promises to myself - if anything I find a relaxing summer holiday is the time that I make decisions to make changes to my life, not when there is a change in numbers in the year date. 

However, I have to admit that recently, I am somewhat unnerved at the reminder of another year gone by, once again faster than the year before, as well as the reckoning with the passage of time and what I've accomplished, or not, so far.  Oh well, here’s to another good year on good old Mother Earth.