It’s almost a “new year” according to the gregorian calendar, though I will probably celebrate a “new year” at least once more in 2024.*
I’m in Delray Beach, Florida, in a retirement community and celebrating with my partner’s parents. But last year, and for two years before that, I was at home, by myself, roller skating, and that was pretty great.
Six years ago my sister got married on New Years, and that was a lot of fun, though I did have too much champagne too early and fought a headache for the bulk of the reception.
New Years 2015 I was in Paris, counting the minutes on the clock and questioning my life choices:
I’ve had SO MANY New Years in church, like Y2K, when I was bracing for the world to end, or 2008, when I was singing in a church choir in NYC**, not far from Times Square, and the pastor played “sounds from hell” as to deter people from “sinning” aka going to the club, after the service, and it really worked on me:
Jokes on me though, because not only did I continue to lust, cuss AND criticize, by New Years 2012 I was spending the evening getting drunk in Bangkok with my then-boyfriend.
When I was a little kid, my folks would drop us kids off at my gran’s house, and we’d put pennies in the window for good luck and watch the ball drop on TV. It’s a sweet memory. I’m putting quarters in the window tonight.
New Years isn’t my favorite holiday, I don’t like drinking much, and in accordance with my belief of time-as-flat-circle, I really think a New Year can be any day and everyday, if you let it.
However, I like the ritual of a bunch of people across the world agreeing that things are somehow new, and happy new years is a pretty innocuous greeting pretty much everyone can accept, so happy new years to you. Wishing you 50-11 more new beginnings.
*Persian New Year, aka the spring equinox on March 19.
**It was Creflo Dollar’s World Changers Church.