This essay first appeared in the Washington Post
We must resolve to do one thing this year that will serve us all well. Let’s end New Years as we know it.
It’s a cheesy celebration with much bad ritual– a holiday when too many of us make an unseemly, excessive effort to enjoy ourselves, like a bunch of six-year-olds straining to laugh the 23rd time at that odd noise from a hand and an armpit. It is probably the date on which the word “party” sadly became a verb.
Don’t you remember? Fearing we’ll miss something eventful, we stare into the television with other wilting, crimson-eyed partygoers. Women plot avoidance of the midnight kiss by lonely Glenn from accounting with the calculator-quick hands. Our stomachs rage. Someone picks up the remote control as midnight nears…
Images flash by: A fading, croaking rock star asks the crowd if it’s “ready to rock,” and the crowd, a generation younger, sounds uncertain. Stomach acid comes to life in a advertising animation A woman in a sequined dress too-short for her advanced years gets her too-tight face and smeary lips too close to the camera. Kids bouncing around in a drug-induced frenzy are exalted high above by a smiling, clueless Dick Clark. Click. More ads. Click. Blurry “before” diet photos. Click. Diet meals. Click. Diet drinks. Click. Diet pills. Click. Diet desserts.
These many reminders of our failings would be enough, but this holiday is full of bad ideas.
To begin with, what’s with this old man and kid in diapers.? They aren’t at all endearing the way Santa or the Easter Bunny are. What happens to the old man? Does he die? How happy is that? And where are this baby’s parents? And what are the two of them doing together.
Then there is all the unsubstantiated summing up by the media with “best of” the year and “most fascinating” and “hottest” lists. Does anyone really think these people are really fascinating.
And there is too much football. Even a fanatic will admit that they’ve seen more than enough before the last bowl games begin, like my old friend Phil, who was frightened out of the recliner one year by an overdose that in his mind transformed an outside linebacker into a Fantasia-like hippo/ballerina. And for a whilenNow the bowl games awkwardly carry the names of their corporate sponsors – more of this holiday’s crass commercialism.
In the morning you have the parades to look forward to. The mummers work all year on gaudy ostrich-feathered costumes costing thousands then unabashedly march through town to “Oh! Dem Golden Slippers” strummed on the banjo. Last year, “strutter” numbers were waning, so one group, hoping to buttress their force, featured “wench dresses” and long braids. And you’re just trying to recuperate.
And there are all those parade hosts who don’t really want to be there or say this cornball stuff about terrible lip-sinked performances, floats and equestrian teams that no one — even kids — really care much about anymore.
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And of course new years is also the time for resolutions. And we all know that doesn’t that work out well.
Finally as it draws to a close, every year we have the same image…. A disheveled mother in a hospital gown holding this poor little new years baby who just wants to adjust slowly to the outside world and spend some time with his mom. Mom has allowed five camera crews, seven reporters and four photographers into her room, fearing otherwise she’ll become “the mother of the new years’ baby who, in a shocking break with tradition, refused to have a press conference.”
So, how about a fresh start. First, how about moving it all to March, where it could break up that a long, solemn stretch before spring. Let’s get better bands, and take everyone away who is drunk. Let’s not sum things up or resolve anything. Lets not drink too much or feel obliged to kiss anyone or have too good of a time or watch any television spectacles. And let’s allow that one poor baby to get away from the old coot and let the other poor baby and his mom to get some sleep.
XXX
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