Who Can Say When the Evening Ends and the Night Begins?

On celebrating the New Year.

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NEW YORK, NEW YORK - JANUARY 01: Confetti fall as the ball drops over Times Square during the 2022 New Year’s Eve celebrations on January 01, 2022 in New York City. Despite a major surge in Covid -19 cases in New York City and across the country, the city held a scaled-down celebration for the annual ball drop. This year, a maximum of 15,000 people will be in attendance, down from approximately 60,000, and proof of vaccination and protective masks are required. (Photo by John Lamparski/Getty Images)

New Year’s Eve is surely the strangest of all holidays. Thanksgiving dinners, a romantic Valentine’s date, birthday parties—all are relatively intimate occasions. Perhaps Halloween is an exception, when we send our children around to the doors of neighbors. But we don’t celebrate together with them. A quick “trick-or-treat,” some candy dropped into a waiting bag, and it’s off to the next house. For a civic occasion like the Fourth of July, we might attend a public event like a parade, but afterwards we retreat to the back yard for barbecue. But on New Year’s Eve, countless people head out to restaurants, bars, clubs, and of course Times Square to celebrate with large crowds of total strangers.

And then there is the practice, more honored in the breach than the observance, of marking the occasion with a New Year’s resolution. I have nothing against such resolutions; to the contrary, I envy anyone who can make and actually keep one. As for me, I gave up making them long ago, because I know myself too well: any resolution worth making is one I would prove too weak-willed to keep. I suspect I am the rule rather than the exception, given our gently ironic assumption that the shelf life of most New Year’s resolutions is about two weeks.

But most baffling of all is the sheer irrationality of New Year’s Eve as an occasion for celebration. Is any other holiday so utterly unmotivated? We know why we celebrate days like Christmas and Easter, and even those who no longer view them as religious festivals can recognize their historical origins. We understand the basis for civic holidays like Memorial Day, Veterans Day, or Presidents’ Day. Thanksgiving has a mixed religious and civic background. Even a more artificial holiday like Mother’s Day at least has a clear rationale.

But New Year’s? What possible significance could there be to turning the calendar from December 31 to January 1? It has no more meaning than the change from December 30 to December 31, or from November 30 to December 1, or for that matter from, say, June 11 to June 12. It marks no special event, no achievement, no turning point in anyone’s life. Who can even say, really, when one year ends and another begins? Every date on the calendar marks the beginning of a new year.

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  1. Avatar photo
    Rjosephpaquette

    It’s quite simple. Christmas is about family. New Years is about friends. Nothing more complicated than that.

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  2. Williambrooks27

    A backyard cookout is not a "barbecue". Unless you're smoking a hog for hours on end, there is no barbecue.

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    1. Jaybrown

      Other types of meat qualify, but the "hours on end" part is certainly correct.

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    CP

    Happy New Year, Peter!

    I share a lot of your problems with New Year’s. It is, in a way, silly and arbitrary, and I never make resolutions either. It does, though, happen to coincide with the Feast of the Circumcision/Naming of Jesus on most liturgical calendars, so that’s something. Though I suppose even our celebration of Christmas can seem arbitrary—after all, despite the fact that it commemorates an actual event, we don’t really know when that event happened.

    I don’t think it’s true that we create our own meaning in the sense of creating our own truth. But I do think communal, cultural practices like celebrating a new year correspond to some deep need that humans have. It’s more necessary to us, I think, than even carnivalesque holidays like Halloween and Mardi Gras are. It’s how we mark (and celebrate) the passing of time as a people. If we’re going to celebrate it anyway, why not celebrate it at Christmas, when the days are about to get longer? My other candidate would be Easter, but man, it would be annoying to begin the year on a different date each time round.

    We are influenced in ways we usually don’t acknowledge by what other humans do. It’s going to feel like a new year, regardless of whether we think it’s arbitrary or not, because everyone is talking as though it is. Might as well celebrate it, even as we find meaningful ways to dialogue with its weirdness, as you’ve done so well here.

    I’m reading a book about a PI as well—who is actually a Bigfoot passing for human, living in Morgantown, WV. It’s called _Foote_, by Tom Bredehoft (a fellow medievalist), and so far, it’s quite good. I’ll have to pick up Thumbprint as well!

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    1. Peter.Meilaender

      CP, thanks, as always. It may feel like a new year to you, but it will take me a good month before I remember to write 23 instead of 22 at the end of a date! ; )
      I do think there is a deep need in people to create the communal cultural practices you describe. It is surely part of our nature as beings meant for community. But I remain ambivalent about it--in a fallen world, I think much the same impulse can produce something good like a holiday festival, something more or less neutral like a crowd of fans cheering at a sporting event, and something bad like a mob. Come to think of it, New Year's Eve celebrations, more than most holidays, may contain a bit of all three.
      By the way, I've been enjoying the daily Twelve Tide e-mails.
      Your mystery novel sounds a little odder than mine! Enjoy. And a happy New Year to you and yours as well.

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        CP

        Thanks, Peter! And glad you're enjoying the emails--thanks for signing up1

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  4. Avatar photo
    Michael Grabowski

    Overindulging in alcohol, noise, and crowds seems like the very best way to ensure the new year starts off with loose ends and lingering regrets. So instead I find myself spending part of the final minutes of 2022 in my time zone quietly reading this fine piece and fussing over my comment while my family has already gone to bed after some sparkling apple-grape along with no-bake cookies. Thank you to Mr. Meilaender and The Dispatch.

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    1. Peter.Meilaender

      Michael, thank you for the kind comment. Your tame New Year's Eve sounds quite a bit like ours. I let myself doze off in an effort to fight off a cold, but my family roused my from my semi-slumbers long enough to greet the new year with some sparklers on the front lawn. A good 2023 to you.

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    Jesse.Wick

    Thanks for a thoughtful essay and a book recommendation rolled right in. Just ordered a copy of the English translation.

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    1. Peter.Meilaender

      Thanks, Jesse! Hope you enjoy the book. Happy New Year.

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    J. Eric

    That’s a great closing paragraph. Thanks

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    1. Peter.Meilaender

      Thanks very much, J. Eric. Glad you liked it, and happy New Year.

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    Ted Gale

    I've mentioned this recently in the comments section of another post . . . if I had known this excellent piece had been forthcoming, I would have saved it (or maybe not, it _is_ one of my favorite factoids):

    In parts of Europe, and in the UK until the middle of the 18th Century, the New Year began on March 25, which was the Feast of the Annunciation (nine months before Christmas). March 25 was also the date which tradition held was the date of the Resurrection (the first Easter).

    So . . . in that schema, the start of the New Year was anything but arbitrary . . . it signified the beginning of a New Creation, echoing both the assent of Mary ("let it be done according to your will") and the Ressurection itself . . .

    . . . and we have replaced it with Dick Clark's Rockin' New Year . . . even as a non-Christian, I can't help but think we have lost something in the exchange . . .

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    1. Peter.Meilaender

      Ted, very interesting. Thanks for sharing that. That would indeed give the day a whole different significance than it currently has for us. I wonder if that older significance continues to lurk subterraneously in the culture and our secularized celebration subconsciously "borrows" a bit from it.

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  8. DTruitt

    The heartfelt celebration of a New Year is predicated on the old year sucking, so the New Year can only get better. So depending upon who you are and your experience of the past year, that might be a good enough reason to celebrate. Candidates for celebrants include:

    Elon Musk
    All of us residents of southwest Florida who experienced the destruction of Hurricane Ian
    Anyone who lost a very important person in their life this year
    Vladimir Putin
    The surviving family members of all those former Putin-supporting oligarchs and generals who accidentally fell out of hospital windows and down the stairs
    Donald Trump
    etc. etc.

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    CynthiaW

    We could all get another year older at midnight, like racehorses.

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    1. Peter.Meilaender

      Ah, but children would be sad not to have their birthdays spread throughout the year.
      Happy New Year, Cynthia.

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        CynthiaW

        One big cake instead of a dozen would be okay.

        Un próspero año nuevo to you, Mr. Meilaender.

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