I can’t say I’ve ever loved New Year’s Eve, probably for the same reason that I usually find my birthdays difficult: it is a holiday closely associated with the idea of change. I have always struggled with change. Just ask my mother. Ironically, New Year’s Eve is a time where people actively plan to make changes in their lives through resolutions, but I wouldn’t say this is the sort of change that makes this holiday gloomy for me. That kind of change is active, whereas for me—with my personality—the change that scares me is passive: it’s like holding onto a car for dear life as it’s speeding along, and you’re expected to keep running. The world doesn’t move to the beat of just one drum, and with every new year, I can’t help but look back and think that I’m not where I expected to be. We make plans, and God laughs: there’s no certainty when it comes to the future, and that can be frustrating.

But then again, that is only because I approach New Year’s in the wrong way. Is it intended as a time to reflect on the past year? Is it a time to plan for the year to come? Yes, but then these attitudes do present problems, much like the problem that I’ve just described. If you dwell on the past year too much, then you don’t allow yourself to move forward; and if you plan for the future in the same measure, you will likely be disappointed with New Year’s, just as I have been. More to the point, what makes these things important for the New Year anyhow? To the extent that we should, is not any other day just as fitting for an examination of our experiences, and should we not bear the future in mind whenever we make a decision? True, we do these things before the year’s end, but they do little on their own to lend the holiday any joy. It’s more like accounting than celebrating, and considering most of us will take this time off work, is this not the opposite of what we should be doing with our downtime?

Thinking about it more, I’ve come to believe this is a false dichotomy. New Year’s Eve is neither about the past year nor the year to come—not in any absolute sense, anyway. If New Year’s Eve is worth anything at all, it is about baptism, rebirth, reincarnation, or a clean slate! It is arbitrary in some sense, but as we mark the beginning of a new annual calendar—our latest trip around the Sun as a species—it is convenient for us to drop the weight of whatever bullshit we’ve carried this past year (we’ve all got some) and start afresh. We did it, after all: you can close your 2023 journal and chuck it in the bin. This is both the end and the beginning, and we are here to witness it. So, fuck it! Pop some champagne and just enjoy it. It tastes cathartic.