New Year’s Eve – celebration or damp squib
Bizarrely, when we were children, New Year’s Eve was so much more exciting than it is now.
Someone in our village used to have a party each year, and lots of families would walk down to theirs, eat lots of food, drink (adults obviously!), dance, and the children would mostly hide upstairs and play board and card games until it was time to sing Auld Lang Syne. Then everyone would say goodbye and walk back home through the village. It was always exciting and full of fun.
Then you grow up, go through uni and starting work, and continue to look forward to going out with friends for New Year celebrations. Whether it be paying extortionate prices for pub entry or parties at friends’ houses, it always seemed to be a good excuse for a night out and getting glammed up.
I remember precisely 4 new year’s eves as an adult, usually because they involved a relationship at the time, or good friends, and were something different to where we’d usually go out…a night out in Lytham-St-Anne’s, the turn of the millennium in Nottingham, a fun night out in a local pub with friends (I came away with raffle winnings, taking away more alcohol than I’d drunk), and a night in Hampshire with a group of friends which included clay shooting beforehand, and had intended to be a first meeting for the OH and I by my friend!
Lots of memories, but the types of night out which were in the past.
Now most of my friends are spread around the country and with the farm still needing to be run, it’s unlikely we’d ever get away as a family to visit friends elsewhere for new year. Other more local friends like us are parents, so until the children are older and we can take them with us, there’s often someone holding a new year day do which everyone comes along to and contributes food. Great fun, and no hassle for trying to get babysitters or screwing up children’s sleeping patterns.
As for making new year’s eve at home interesting…
I have to admit that we don’t even stay up to watch in the new year on television. The OH has to get up early for feeding and I’m just too tired, so it’s usually a normal night for us.
How boring are we (no need to answer that!)? Or are we the norm for many people today?