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| December | 31 |
| 2004 |
Call me a party-pooper - and I’ll take it as a compliment, not an insult, thank you very much - but in my book today is by quite a long way the worst day of the year. To be more specific, I’m referring to the last four or so hours, tonight. There’s nothing wrong with the first twenty hours of the day. They’re much like any other. The misery kicks in when the New Year’s Eve parties begin.
For days now, no conversation with a friend is without the killer question: ‘What are you doing on New Year’s Eve’. Give the answer I most like to give – ‘I’m sitting at home and then going to bed’ – and you’re told not to be such a misanthrope. It’s party time! Get out there and party!
No thanks. Earlier this month I celebrated my fortieth birthday and I’ve decided that, now that I am a mature, sensible, adult, it’s time to stand up to the crowd and reveal the truth: I hate New Year’s Eve. I always have and I always will. No other night of the year manages the unique combination of misery, discomfort, expense and sheer downright unpleasantness. New Year’s Eve, in a word, stinks.
In my personal pantheon of New Year’s Eve horrors the winner has to be the night I was surrounded by a dozen legless nuns.
They weren’t real nuns. They were fellow students, dressed as nuns. And they weren’t literally legless. They had simply had too much – way too much – to drink. It wasn’t the fact of their drunkenness that was so bad, either. It was the consequence of their drunkenness – that, as they started leaping into the air to celebrate the passing of the old year and the coming of the new, they began, almost in unison, to empty the contents of their stomachs onto the bar floor.
It is just possible that, had I too been drunk, I might have regarded this all as a hoot. They certainly did. But I was stone cold sober. As the only one in our group who had a car, and thus as the regular chauffeur for my pals, I was always sober.
That New Year’s Eve (some time in the late 1980s; I have tried to forget the exact date) stands for me as the epitome of why I loathe the night. Despite being reminded every 31st December of its all consuming awfulness, we seem annually to forget how bad the experience was the previous year, and to embrace it as the greatest party night of the year.
Well it isn’t and I won’t. Count me out.
The worst aspect of New Year’s Eve is the false bonhomie on which the whole affair is built. Turn up at a party tonight and the chances are that you will, if you are lucky, know half a dozen people. The rest will be strangers. But that will not stop them from assuming that there is no one else on the planet with whom you would rather be. It will not stop them from assuming that, as the clock strikes twelve, you want them to take hold of your face and plant a smacker on your lips. And it will not stop them from assuming that you want them to grab you from behind and push you into a conga dance through the room.
Some of the others at the party will, perhaps, be people you met for the first time last year at the same event. They, like you, will have been browbeaten into returning this year lest they be thought a killjoy for staying at home.
Others will be complete strangers who – poor, deluded fools – are under the impression that this year will be different, and that they are going to have the fabulous New Year’s Eve night that they have never had before, but which they think everyone else but them always does.
I’ll let you into a secret. No one is having a fabulous night. Everyone is asking themselves the same questions: What on earth am I doing here? Why did I relent and come? Why did I forget how awful it was last year?
New Year’s Eve is an annual compendium of party lowlights, all lumped together into one truly terrible evening. You want specifics? I give you karaoke. Has mankind ever managed to come up with more depressing an idea? Having to listen to a succession of what sounds like half cut, tone deaf cats, screeching their way through My Way or butchering New York, New York, is an annual treat which I have not yet fully understood.
I am, as a man, lucky enough – usually - to avoid the attentions of every party’s statutory lecherous, fat, belching, ugly, sweaty bloke, who sees New Year’s Eve as his annual opportunity to grope his way through the entire female contingent of the party. But I must nonetheless suffer with everyone else the joy of being pinned to the wall by the drunken bore, who is convinced that I am thrilled to have met him and to be forced to listen to his gripping account of his family Christmas.
Not that it’s only parties which need to be avoided. Supposedly civilised evenings in a restaurant are, if anything, still worse. A below average bistro, which might be a rip-off at £25 a head, feels no compunction in charging £75 a head tonight – and because anywhere half way decent has been booked up for months, off we all trot to a restaurant we wouldn’t dream of frequenting on a normal night.
And all of this is without even thinking about the pleasure of getting home. Think you’ll get a taxi? As if! If you’re prepared to wait for two hours then you might, with luck, have the privilege of paying treble the normal fare.
However unbearable such things may be, all of them are, in the end, superficial. The real problem with New Year’s Eve is philosophical: the idea that somehow everything in our lives is going to change, and that a new year heralds a new dawn. It doesn’t. All it heralds is the clock ticking from 23.59 to 0.00. 1st January is 31st December with a minute added on. And if there’s anything sadder than pretending to enjoy the grotesque pain of a New Year’s Eve party, it’s pretending that it matters.
Might I make a small suggestion? Have a really good night tonight. Go to bed.
MessageSpace
If you think your New Years Eve experiences have been bad, you should see what the Germans have to put up with.
If you can tune into German satellite TV channels you can watch their Sylvester Parties. Not a pretty sight.
"but in my book today is by quite a long way the worst day of the year."
Surely that should read-
"but in my book, on David Blunkett which is widely available and very reasonably priced, today is by quite a long way the worst day of the year".
They have done a survey in the US about NYE and most people don't actually go out or even do anything. Its all hype...like any other night, do whatever the hell you want tonight and whatever it is have a good one.
If they could just hold it earlier in the evening, it might not be so bad.
The build up to the festive season is intense. Everyone looks forward to the seasonal traditions, especially those of New Year. When it comes, people expect an explosion of happiness, a one off delight in the festival of cheeriness. Unfortunately all they get is, an inflated version of every Saturday night throughout the year.
The thing I find hard to understand is how most people(whom get drunk every weekend anyway) look especially forward to something which they have done all year round - albeit without the rendition of 'Auld Lang Sine'. They will say that it is perhaps a chance to get "even more drunk". Why is this regarded as so special?
"Earlier this month I celebrated my fortieth birthday and I’ve decided that, now that I am a mature, sensible, adult, it’s time to stand up to the crowd and reveal the truth: I hate New Year’s Eve."
I seem to remember you wrote an almost identical article this time last year.
"I’ll let you into a secret. No one is having a fabulous night."
Stop confusing yourself with everyone.
God you are so right. No other night lends itself to show much loneliness and disappointment then NYE. If you do not have a date you feel (or you allow people to make you feel) like such a loser. Most of the time (I live in New York) the weather is dreadful and the next day is such a let down. I think that part of the problem is that NYE and Christmas are too close together with each other.
when does the next series of Grumpy Old Men start?
Stephen, this is the same article you wrote last year. That's pretty lame.
"Have a really good night tonight. Go to bed. "
Not a chance. For some reason we are to be lambasted with a rendition of the assault on Fallujah, starting when it gets dark and continuing well after 4.30 AM (despite new laws supposed to limit the use of Fireworks after 1.00 AM).
The worst thing about New Year's Eve is this modern insistence of an antisocial minority to share it with all and sundry. Who started setting off fireworks on New Year's Eve? And why aren't they in jail (or somewhere worse... Croydon perhaps)?
I am reading this a year after it was written on my way to write sonething very similar on my own blog!!!
I Hate New Year for all the reasons you have listed and more... it is a date change, a second change if you like and still the fuss.
I hate it and I will go to bed and treat it like any other night instead of the night of hellish irritation it aspires to be!!
I hate New Year's Eve as much as anyone, to the point of googling "I hate New Year's Eve" and getting this. But, really, let's all be honest with ourselves. We hate New Year's Eve because this is just like any other miserable, lonely, losing population contest, only more so. There's no getting around it, and no getting around it. Anyone who says they sleep: I'm sorry, I just don't buy it. If my friend's flake out, I'm going to be wandering around in a daze along 5th Avenue, Brooklyn, wondering how I got outside.
The worst thing is that people expect you to be somewhere at NYE.
I can't just say I'll go to bed like any other normal day. People declare you nuts. Even though...If I lived by my own I would have. (They've already declared me nuts - so it doesn't matter)
I had two choices this year:
1) spending it with so called 'friends', last year it was absolutely horrible. People boozing and thinking they're suddenly interesting because they're drunk...and extremely disgustingly prepared food (who eats sprouts? ieuw) which I had to pay 30€ for...hallelujah!
2) Or back to spending it with my mum and her boyfriend at her best friends house...
Obviously I took the second one...I just hope her boyfriend won't start dancing like an escaped tiroler again...which he always does.
And then at 00h00 everyone starts kissing and acts as if we love each other oh so much...oh dear. Please kill me.
New Years Eve...what a load of shite.
What is going to be different in Britain after tonight? Nothing.
Still the same old crap at 12.01am - crime, murder, fraud, scroungers, abuse, chavs, late trains, pollution, tax...wtf is there is celebrate?
i hate new years because there is so much expectation and pressure to be doing something im a student so am home for the festive period obviously after two years ive lost contact with my school friends i neally went to the effort of going to the otherside of the country to be with my mates from uni but that would have been well exspensive when i could go out for a third of the price every normal weekeend in term time. so im forced to stay at home my parents n my auntys r going to the pub ( the thought of going with couldnt be more embarasing as all they ask why rnt u out with your friends grrr ) leaving me at home with my 15 n below aged cousins entertaining them so i cant even go to bed oh n then tomos when their all hung over im looking after the kids before being allowed to carry on with my essays.happy new year oh yeah right!!
i too hate new years. every year i dread it.. though it is not my most hated holiday. my birthday is atop my list of most loathed holidays/celebrations. new years is second. im 15 years old and i hate new years. its the same every year. people get drunk just like they would any other weekend except this night they get to count down to something. i hate it. and there is an unbelievable amount of pressure on me to go to parties but i cannot stand new years at all. and as lame as this sounds, i will settling into bed early as well. im happy there are other people who hate new years as much as i do.
I definatly agree...New Years Eve sucks!! Without a girlfriend/boyfriend or wife/husband to enjoy the holiday it is worthless. I hate it so much I volunteered to go to work tomorrow at 6:30am. I hate parties, dancing, and drunk woman who go home with the first loser they see. Repugnant, I think not....Embracive, now that I can adhere to!
I agree completely. I can;t stand the idea of people counting down to something which doesn't even exist anyway. Last year I was in Sydney's Circular Quay. There were multiple countdowns, and which one was the 'real' one? It's not as if anything magically changs anyway! The worst thing is people hwo use the excuse to have a party. As if you need an excuse to hae a good party anyway. I have a secret: I'm not in bed. I'm at a 'party', and it's just as good as any other, except there's been this hug expectation, which it was never going to live up to anyway....
If anyone's life has changed in the 1 hour before this post was written, please share it..
I too Googled "I hate new years" and stumbled upon this blog. And as my search reveals, I do hate new years too. Perhaps it wasn't as bad the last few years when I did have a girlfriend, however, I believe it is still as pointless. And how about New Years resolutions? Why on January 1st does everybody suddenly see what they need to change about themselves. Then they rush and try to make the immediate change with these "resolutions" the adhere to for about 2 or 3 weeks until they are forgotten until the following NYE. If you really want to change something about yourself, what's wrong with any other day? It's approaching 9:00 PM here in the midwestern United States now...I for one am going to get some rest...maybe watch a movie and fall asleep on the couch like a normal evening. Thanks for the blog post, it made me smile. --Michael
This may be getting repetitive, but I too got here by googling "I hate New Year's Eve". It was just so tempting. I usually "celebrate" with my extended family at home. I don't mind this - for a while - because it's an excuse to get together, talk and joke around amongst ourselves (although we do that on New Year's Day too, so I really WOULD rather spend NYE in my cozy bed....). But then something goes terribly wrong: New Year's comes calling! Someone invariably turns on the TV so that we can do the dredded countdown with a bunch of cocky celebrities in New York. Those celebrities apparently have set their watches by a different standard, because they always seem to start the countdown a few seconds before or after me. It's all so confusing really... How can I mark that all-important instant of New Year's if we can't get the time straight? Anyway, after the countdown, it's all hugs and kisses with my family, as if something magical and unrepeatable just happened.
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