I’ve never much cared for New Year’s Eve. My father referred to it, with humor and scorn, as “amateur night.” It’s a contrived holiday that tends to be the focus of too much partying anticipation. I can’t remember how many New Year’s Eve parties I went to during my college years, but I can remember that none of them met my ridiculously high expectations.
What’s a year, anyway? It’s a rough approximation of how long it takes for the Earth to revolve around the Sun, marked according to a calendar decreed by a long-dead Pope. Logically, calendar years mean little. They help us account for the seasons, and plan our activities, and look ahead to when we hope it will be warmer — but that’s about it.
And yet . . . years often have a consistent vibe to them, don’t they? We recall good years and bad years. We especially remember the bad years, when loved ones died or personal failures occurred or some other adversity dominated our intimate little worlds. If we’re having a bad year, we hope that the change to the calendar that arbitrarily occurs at midnight on December 31 will similarly mean a change in our fortunes. It can’t, obviously — but sometimes it does, just the same.
So, if you are having one of those bad years, I hope that your fate changes in 2013. I hope that, as that calendar page is torn away, you start to realize your personal goals and experience satisfaction in your personal lives and feel contentment with your circumstances. If you have had a good year in 2012? Well, then I just hope that calendar years are as meaningless as our rational brains dictate they must be.
Happy New Year!
Happy New Year! Here’s hoping that no Webner House readers lost a tooth last night.
Happy New Year to everyone!
