New Years Eve (Originally Published 2010)
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Why is the celebration of the New Year such a cultural staple? Is it not just another day?
Tonight is a night of celebrations and the crowd seems to be bigger and bigger every year at Times Square in Manhattan as we celebrate a holiday for what? To forget about how crappy our lives are? This is not the words of someone that is bitter or with a humbug spirit. I just hope that my life is a little more meaningful than to celebrate an arbitrary change in the calendar. New Years Eve is like a Friday on Steroids. Why should Friday be any more significant that Wednesday? I fully understand that typically we don’t work on Saturday and Sunday. But, what does it say about society that we are looking towards Friday on Monday? Is this what society has come to? It reminds me of “Bread & Circus” during the Roman Empire. The thinking was that as long as the people in the empire were fed and entertained they would not revolt. So the Romans had gladiator fights at the Coliseum to entertain the masses.
We are creating our own “Bread & Circus” by getting drunk on December 31st each year and watching a glass ball fall down as a million gawkers chant down from 10 to 1 in unison.
I do however enjoy the circus that is New Years Day college football. I and others have anticipated watching the match-ups for weeks since there announcement. New Years Day marks the beginning of the end of the college football season which includes six mostly marquee match-ups. This is the only significant difference between January 1 and July 24. Other than the large amount of sales that are likely to be at the department and specialty stores. Nothing says celebration like getting 40 percent off a TV or nothing shows how much you are showing your patriotism like by a discount mattress on Flay Day.
Secondly…
The masses decide that this is now going to be the year that I quit smoking or start a new workout plan (I imagine Monday will be a huge day for gym membership sales). Mostly people will forget about a new year’s resolution in a couple of weeks and return to eating Burger King or KFC for lunch. Largely we are lying to ourselves. We use the New Year to con ourselves into thinking “this will be different” or my favorite “this is a fresh start”. Different? Fresh? Compared to what?
