New Year’s Eve Blues

The New Year’s Eve/New Year holiday has always been, to my mind, the poor step child of holidays. It is played up as a wonderful excuse to let loose, have fun and celebrate the passing of the old year and the promise of the new. In my experience, it has been anything but that. 

I should start out by saying that my parents had New Year’s Eve down pat. Year after year they got together with the same group of church friends and had an alcohol-free good time. They ate well, played games and laughed a lot. It was the one night of the year that they would come strolling in at 3 or 4 in the morning.  

Silly me thought that was the way it should be. When I got into high school the kids of that church group would get together as well. While it was an OK time, we inevitably ended a lot earlier than the old folks and never seemed able to match their high spirits.

It all went downhill from there. I don’t remember what I did on most New Year’s Eve nights over the years. I do remember one night when my South Carolina “friends” plied me with shots of Jack Daniels, which I was drinking on an empty stomach, by telling me that they had all done shots when I was out of the room. Let’s just say that the results were not pretty. 

There were some good New Year’s Eve parties at the Broder/Bernstein home in Mount Airy with plenty of good food. That being said, I definitely paid the next day for eating too many of the excellent Broder hot wings, and I had a much stronger stomach back then than I do now.  

One year Julie and I went to one of the New Year’s Eve extravaganzas which promised a buffet dinner, live music, a comedian and complimentary champagne. The food was terrible and the live music was generic. The comedian, though, was the worst. He went around the room asking people what they did, but then had no quips to follow it up. He asked either Julie or I what we did and whoever was asked answered that they were a lawyer AND HE COULD NOT COME UP WITH A LAWYER JOKE!!!!! You should not be allowed to call yourself a comedian if you can’t even rag on lawyers. (Q. What’s the difference between a lawyer and a vampire? A. A vampire only sucks blood at night). We drank our complimentary glass of flat “champagne” at midnight and were out of there by 12:15.  

Once we had kids and they were old enough to want to stay up until midnight on New Year’s Eve we would make appetizers and plan a movie marathon, which my sister seems to be able to pull off pretty well. Inevitably, by 11:30 a couple of the kids has wandered off to bed and the rest were asleep, along with Julie. I would wake everyone up around 11:55 to watch the ball drop, and then we trudged upstairs to call it a night. Not exactly a New Year’s Rockin Eve!!! 

Last year Max, Will and I were in Seoul, South Korea for the New Year (back in ancient times when you could travel). Max and I made the mistake of going to the New Year’s Eve festivities there because we heard about a tradition of ringing a huge bell 33 times to welcome in the new year. It was just as jammed as New York is, if not more so. We heard a K-Pop band, saw people making speeches we could not hear, and would not have understood if we did, but didn’t hear the bell. We saw them strike it, but the sound did not carry. At least on the way back to the hotel we ran into a celebration at a Buddhist temple which was very cool.  

Julie and Calvin were jam packed into Red Square in Moscow with the Boy’s Choir. Apparently the Russians like to welcome the new year in by standing cheek to jowl as well, though they did have a terrific firework display from what I was told. I am not sure that Julie saw it as she was running around trying to locate some wandering choir boys. It wouldn’t be a KSB tour without some drama.  

Sum it all up and you have a pretty forgetful holiday that we remember every year. I’m not sure what this year holds, but hopefully we at least make it to midnight. More importantly, here’s wishing everyone out there a very Happy New Year!!!!