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Good evening folks, may I join you in a smoke? I hope that your New Year's Eve/Day was everything that you had hoped for. As has been my habit for the past couple of years, I spent my new year's eve posing as a valet. I know what you are thinking, and you can stop right there. I am an excellentvalet; honest, polite, responsive and I treat every patron’s vehicle as if it were my own. Granted, I ride a Harley, so that treatment involves finding something to serve as a right-side ramp, sufficient velocity, and really (really) good tires. Being a "Hog-Driver", I try for the convertibles, but if I get the keys to a hard top... I will return a convertible.
Whether the edible confetti used 40 hours ago in London, or the 40,000 explosives detonated in the midnight skies of Mumbai, New Year’s Eve festivities have always held a cool fascination for me. While the ability to mark time has been indisputably critical to society, not to mention the survival of civilization (picture a Visigoth, standing with his tribal leader in the middle of an ice-covered field) "Beats me, boss. This grain seemed to be doing just fine four months ago", in the strictest sense, recognizing the advent of a New Year with a celebration isn’t necessary for anyone... and yet we do.
So why do we do it? Why choose an arbitrary point on a timeline for a celebration? Moreover, why is this custom so universal that it bridges all continents, cultures, religions and has done so for countless centuries? While the exact timing of this gateway (and the manners of observation) is as differing as the peoples who participate...we participate. My speculation is that these activities serve a couple basic human needs. First, as individuals; an excellent New Year's observation can be all the things that a great birthday should be, but (if one is neither a child nor a celebrity/supermodel) usually isn't. A birthday should be a time of celebration, a grateful acknowledgment of yet another year life. Instead, it usually winds up being “your day in the barrel”, with bad jokes from friends, and even worse “wit” lurking within every birthday card... Don’t forget the double bogie if the last digit of your age just clicked to a zero. Birthdays stink, but a great NYE, however you might define it, can offer a kind of ‘proper’ birthday... a birthday celebration for you and a billion of your closest friends.
Societally, while many of the Western culture's pre-new year rituals have gone the way of the snail-darter (settle all debts, make amends to those who have been slighted, and thank those who have stood by them) "out with the old, and in with the new" offers an annual opportunity for an emotional audit, a time to reflect on the past, cast our collective eyes to the future, and maybe (just maybe) create and stick to positive resolutions.
While practicality (and the lack of 20 billion frequent flier miles) made it a mite hard for all of the staff to personally clink glasses with you on New Year’s Eve, it's very important to all of us to express our thanks for your patronage, your friendship, and (occasionally) even your patience. We are grateful to have you as a customer, and look forward to an even closer relationship in 2014.
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