All writers in Op Ed are here to inform and acknowledge issues of importance to our communities, however these writings represent the views and opinions of the authors and not necessarily of The Advertiser.

Linda Nidiffer

I don’t get it and furthermore, I have never understood the need to celebrate on New Year’s Eve.  To me it is like celebrating being one more day closer to death.  Oh, wait!  We do that on our birthdays.  That makes the New Year’s celebration superfluous.  In some countries everyone turns a year older on the exact same day; they don’t see a birthday as an individual event. Then they have a big celebration for the whole populace turning older. 

How many of you remember the nonevent of New Year’s Eve as the millennium changed?  Our whole family, plus my mother-in-law, trekked from Indiana to Florida to witness this big deal with my sister and her family.  Do you remember how everyone was worried about all the computers crashing?  The crash would be responsible for all kinds of havoc including airlines, hospitals, banks, and the power grid.  There were so many harebrained theories about the devastation of turning 2000! Dinner conversation that Eve was very lively.  My family was breathless with anticipation while waiting for the ball to drop in New York.

As it turned out everyone turned into bed early that night.  I was the only one still awake watching the ball drop and waiting for “the other shoe to drop.”  The computers clicked over from 1999 to 2000 without a ripple in the universe.  It seemed as though people forgot that one thing computers are good for is counting.  What a letdown for the planet!  I stayed up a couple of more hours just to see if anything big happened in other parts of the world.  I have never witnessed a bigger nonevent than that one.

Why does the New Year have to start in January?  On this side of the equator January is so dark and drear. Why don’t we celebrate the beginning of a new year when the lambs are born in the spring?  We have just had too many gatherings in the winter—Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas—why not have the New Year start in May or June?  June is a good time for weddings and lives starting a new chapter.  It seems to have a new year start on the summer solstice would be a good idea.   In January when everything is dead and dying is not an auspicious time for changing into a new year and to expect the year to be happy seems incongruous and not a time for a celebration.

I know that I am old and cranky and in a few more days I will officially be a year older.  As a kid I loved having a spontaneous party for no reason.  As an adult I am not in love with the idea of a global party when countless people are killed in drunken driving accidents. I just don’t get it and I never will.  Bah, humbug!  

Stay safe.  Don’t drive under the influence of anything other than good sense. Don’t do something stupid that you get to regret the rest of your life.  Start the new year off rightso you get to see the end of this year in health and happiness.