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Anti-N.Y

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Burn down the disco! Hang the blessed DJ! So sang Morrissey back in 1986. He probably wasn’t talking about New Years Eve, but he should have been. He certainly manages to sum up the way I feel about this annual celebration of Bacchic Stupidity.

I’m not entirely sure when New Year started to become about as exciting as an omnibus episode of Dallas. ‘Back in the Day’, New Year used to be something to look forwards to. It brought with it the novelty of being able to stay up late and watch TV, drinking pop and filling your face with fluorescent carcinogenic sweets until your insides felt like a washing machine fully loaded with old socks. This flowed seamlessly into the period when the novelty was being able to drink alcohol until your insides felt like a washing machine fully loaded with old socks. Then something went wrong. For me, the Golden Period of New Year Celebrations ended with the global wash-out that was the Millennium.
It’s hard to cast your mind back and remember the kind of Pre-Millennial Tension existed back then in the late 90s. People were waiting for something big. Lefties with crumbs of food stuck in their beards were certain that the wheels of capitalism would grind to a halt, provoking the spontaneous formation of anarcho-socialist syndicates in which men would all have beards and women would wear floaty, see-through dresses. Right-wing nutcases started hording guns and smelled the opportunity to do some shootin’ as the paternalistic nanny-state collapsed. Even the Government started printing leaflets on the ‘Millennium Bug’, offering utterly pointless recommendations along the lines of ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’. (A poster campaign with this very slogan was actually run by the British Government during the Second World War. They may as well have printed ‘You’re All Going To Die Horrible Deaths at Nazi Gunpoint’ and it’d have sounded marginally less terrifying).
In the end, nothing happened on the 31st of December 1999. The left didn’t get their revolution. The right didn’t get to fire buckshot into the butts of looters. The Jehovas Witnesses didn’t get the second coming of Christ that they’d been hoping for. And, more importantly, I didn’t get the unforgettable night of revelry that Prince had promised me. Instead, I woke up on a mattress in a student Camin with no trousers, a splitting headache and a vaguely embarrassing memory of dancing on a table.
Since then, things have only gone downhill. I no longer look forward to New Year. I dread it. The best new post-millennial New Year I had was when I stayed in bed with a cold, and had to be woken up on the stroke of midnight to take a Paracetamol and blow mucus out of my nose. Really – that was one of the better years.
Let’s face it, there’s no good reason to dislike New Year. You can’t pretend that it’s gone “too commercial,” like Christmas. You can’t pretend that you “don’t like people making a fuss”, like you can for your Birthday. In fact, for one single, solitary night, everyone is ever-so, ever-so nice. Strangers come up to you on the street and offer you a swig of warm lager. You’re allowed on public transport for free. People strike up jovial conversations with you about ‘the friendly atmosphere’. Which is probably why I hate it so intensely.
I hate New Year because I’m a closet misanthrope. I can’t stand the sight of other people enjoying themselves. I can’t stand the sight of all those people desperately trying to have the most fun and desperately trying to be the most jovial. My immediate reaction is to transform myself into a life-size, 3D caricature Morrissey, grimly eyeing the ecstatic revellers and secretly hoping they’d all die of some painful and previously eradicated 19th century disease. Like gout. Or something.
I’m sure I’m not the only one who feels like this. There must be others like me. And I’ve got a plan. Let’s all stay in bed for New Year, and get together later to celebrate a deliberately esoteric ‘Substitute New Year’. It’ll be great! We can have fun on your own, without the encumbering burden of having to watch other drunken idiots spoil our evening by being affable, grinning morons. I suggest we choose one of the following:
Serbian New Year: Serbs celebrate 13 days after us, thanks to some odd jiggery-pokery based on the Julian calendar. Everyone else will still be recovering from their hangovers, while we’ll be free to enjoy ourselves, probably with someone called Milos.
Burns Night: Held on January 25th, the birthday of the Scottish national poet Robert Burns, this is a fine excuse to drink enough Whiskey to stun a horse. Plus celebrating a poet’s birthday will make us all look vaguely intellectual – at least to easily fooled members of the opposite sex.           
Chinese New Year: Let’s head to Europa (the Bucharest hypermarket, not the continent) on February 7, 2008 and celebrate the coming of the rather un-auspicious-sounding Year of the Rat.
Lady Day: In England, this was our New Year's Day prior to 1752, when we made the shift from the Julian to the Gregorian Calendar. What’s more, it’s held on the decidedly distant date of March 25th! New Year… in March! What could be better! Everyone back to mine!