Students from the University get to celebrate all sorts of holidays during winter break. There’s Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Boxing Day and for many of us, the festival of Hypnos, Greek god of sleep. The one that all of us observe, however, is often not considered a holiday. I’m speaking, of course, of Sobriety Checkpoint Day, better known as New Year’s Eve.
Though you might not label New Year’s as a bona fide holiday, one thing is for sure: You have to do something on New Year’s. Everyone does something for New Year’s. Staying at home and watching “Murder, She Wrote,” is not an option, unless you’re collecting Social Security checks — and even then it may get you branded as “weak sauce.” At the end of December, even people normally found on their porches with shotguns scramble around for party invitations — it’s almost uncanny.
At these parties, of course, one mandatory activity is watching the ball drop in Times Square. When I was a kid, hearing about this tradition made me terribly confused. I couldn’t believe intelligent people would take a huge crystal ball and just let it drop in such a crowded place. Horrible visions of maimed revelers filled my head. Imagine my relief when I discovered the truth. We really shouldn’t mislead people that way. I’d recommend renaming the ritual to “lowering the ball gently, like a baby into the crib.” There’s something to be said for truth in advertising.
The non-ball-dropping portions of the New Year’s TV specials are pretty strange, too. In particular, one can’t help but chuckle at the pre-taped “dance party” segments, where the brightest stars of the music business lip-sync their way through their hit singles while paid partiers with big, phony smiles dance like mad. The camera even occasionally shows a glimpse of a couple bumping and grinding, as if to suggest to the younger set that edgy stuff is going down and the network simply can’t show it. You have to hand it to the dancers-for-hire, though. It’s got to be hard to pretend it’s midnight when it’s really 10 in the morning, and you came to the studio lot straight from IHOP.
Then, of course, there’s the singing of “Auld Lang Syne.” Edward A. Craighill, the reputed author of the Good Old Song, has got to be turning over in his grave knowing that some 18th-century Scottish poet decided to ignore his copyright! Still, it’s somehow fitting that on New Year’s, Cavalier fans everywhere get to mentally relive all the great field goals that we scored in the last year. So we’ll let this “Robert Burns” character get away with it, despite the fact that the whole affair seems to cry out for some sort of Honor charges.
To experience all of these traditions, however, one has to stay up until midnight. For us young whippersnappers, this is no problem. In many cases, though, watching old people try to soldier through the evening awake is a patience-trying exercise. I don’t think an Olympic pool full of coffee could have kept up all the adults in the house where I was. Maybe there ought to be a separate party show for the older crowd with Jimmy Buffett, Bruce Springsteen and an Elvis impersonator. That ought to keep them up past 10. At the very least, it’d be interesting to see what the paid dancing would look like. Electric Slide, anyone?
When the morning comes, it’s time to make some New Year’s resolutions. For older people, these usually have something to do with fitness or losing weight; we young folk usually resolve to change some negative personality characteristic, even though it’s likely set in stone at this point. In other words, most New Year’s resolutions have about as much chance of success as a family-friendly slapstick comedy starring Clint Eastwood. Despite this fact, it’s almost mandatory to make at least one. Failure to do so is tantamount to wearing a bright orange, “I’m Awesome” T-shirt. Rather than risk being shunned by your entire family, it’s safer just to go ahead and resolve something. I recommend something small and difficult for others to verify such as “smile more” or “stop planning for world domination.”
At first, the New Year is disorienting. It’s always strange to read recaps of what happened in the past year; things that happened not too long ago seem ages in the past. “Michael Phelps? Wasn’t he one of the Stuart kings of England?” And of course, it’s usually a solid month into the year before I start remembering to mark letters and papers with the new year’s date. Yet, once you have your head wrapped around it, the new year is a time of excitement and optimism. Perhaps you don’t remember a large chunk of the first few hours of 2009; you still have a chance to make the rest of it extra memorable. As that sneaky Robert Burns would tell you, it’s far worse to forget your auld acquaintances.
Matt’s column runs biweekly Wednesdays. He can be reached at m.waring@cavalierdaily.com.
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