Happy new year :)
In Defense of New Years Eve
Nadine’s at the party. Everyone hates January — everyone at this party — they can’t believe they have to face it again. They just barely survived that weird time between Christmas and New Years — you know the one, the one where you’re exhausted from the familial conversations about losing weight and electoral politics but not quite back to your normal routine. What were they even supposed to be doing during this time, the people at this party? They hate that weird time, they hate January, and oh god, don’t get them started on tonight, on New Years Eve. Too many expectations! Too much pressure! It’s all a lie sold by Big New Years, trying to get you to pay $60 to stand around in something sparkly trying to avoid falling into tropes about Being Single and Not Having a Kiss at Midnight. And it’s never fun, New Years Eve, the party guests agree, boy do they agree, they’d be snapping in agreement if this was a poetry reading. But it’s not, it just Maddie’s kitchen, equipped with the second cheapest prosecco and triscuits and a too-bright Big Light.
And so Nadine leans against the counter while Tall Man in Button Down, who she just met, is speaking the mind of the group when he says that January is still winter, the weather is still bad, but you don’t even have Christmas spirit, you don’t have whimsical lights, or peppermint mochas, you just have grey and 4 PM sunsets. But what she’s thinking, what she can’t quite articulate, is that she loves January. She loves it! And she didn’t realize she loved January until she felt surprised by the January hate in Maddie’s kitchen. She loves being at the top of the year, the way the months spread out before her like Mufasa’s kingdom — everything the light touches is hers. She loves that it feels like the year hasn’t even started yet, like she’s a beleaguered mother who managed to wake up early enough to have coffee alone before the other months come running down stairs asking for breakfast. The days are still short but they’re getting longer — they’re getting longer! Could there be anything more hopeful? And maybe she’s a hopeful person, Nadine is realizing that she might be a hopeful person, which she hadn’t realized before.
And she loves New Years, sorry! And actually she thinks that these people are just bad at managing their own expectations, knows in her heart that they probably also hate their birthdays, that they crumble under the pressure of the expectations of cake and candles and their loved ones singing, and she hates that about them. She wishes they would grow up and buy themselves a cake and do something nice for themselves — it doesn’t have to be a party, everyone thinks they have to have a party but really they shouldn’t if they don’t like parties, they could just go to the park for an hour and eat their favorite croissant while listening to their favorite song and call the birthday a success. Don’t they know they can define success for themselves, surely they’d read somewhere too right? And tonight, she wishes she could explain it, she’s really not sure how to articulate it, she wishes she could explain that they need to realize that by drinking prosecco in something sparkly and experiencing mild disappointment by the lack of a midnight kiss, that by doing that they have successfully Done New Years Eve. That they can actually take pleasure in knowing that at that exact moment everyone in their same time zone is pretty much doing the exact same thing — and how often does that happen anymore? New Years Eve is the only mono-culture we have left, and can’t they enjoy it? Really what she wants to say, and she doesn’t know how, is that they should just decide to have fun and then have fun. You can just have fun if you want to, you don’t have to wait.
But she doesn’t say it because she doesn’t know how to articulate it without coming across adversarial, and she just met these people, and that’s how you bond with new people, right, you find common ground? And she’s not sure she can pull off disagreeing in a playful way, she thinks she’d maybe need to be a little hotter to do that. And maybe they don’t even feel this way, these people. Maybe they don’t hate January or New Years Eve — they’re here aren’t they, on New Years Eve? Maybe they’re just saying it to say it, to bond with these new people in the bright kitchen, just like she is. Maybe they, like Nadine, don’t know how to articulate these feelings without seeming obsessed with their own Wisdom, like those women on TikTok who call themselves the “Internet’s Big Sister” and list out rules for how to have a fun night out. But now that she thinks about it, she actually quite likes those women and the things they have to say and their overall vibe, and why shouldn’t she seem like them? Maybe one day she will get the courage, like those women, to announce that she likes January actually and that she thinks that if you don’t know how to have fun on New Years Eve you should just grow the hell up and have fun.
But tonight she’ll just laugh along and drink the second cheapest prosecco in something sparkly and not kiss anyone. And she’ll fucking love it.
listened to while writing: many NPR Tiny Desks
Love this. I love new year’s ☺️🎉
One of my favs!