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What are you doing new year's eve?
Dec. 31st, 2008 03:49 pm"I feel like one who treads alone
Some banquet hall deserted,
Whose lights are fled, whose garlands dead,
And all but he departed!"
- Thomas Moore
Valentine's Day gets all the publicity, but in my opinion New Year's Eve is the most insidiously romantic night of the year. While Valentine's Day is overt and demonstrative, New Year's Eve is sly and subversive. New Year's Eve inspires an unspoken but pervasive conflict between companionship and loneliness, brought into stark contrast by the end of one year and the beginning of another. The formal transition from one year to the next only seems arbitrary when you're not the person looking around for a hand to hold.
One of the most enduring New Year's Eve traditions is the kiss-at-midnight, a looming peer-pressurized moment in the year of any desperately single individual. This desperation has been known to manifest in all sorts of unhealthy ways, from ill-considered dates to impulsive late-night post-boozing Girls Gone Wild purchases.
The touchstone romantic comedy of this generation, When Harry Met Sally, features a climactic scene at a New Year's Eve party in Manhattan. "Harry" alludes to the evening's expectations when he intones, "it's not because I'm lonely, and it's not because it's New Year's Eve. I came here tonight because when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible." This movie, for all its modern-day wisdom, gave misplaced hope to millions of guys who look like Billy Crystal that they could land a babe who looked like Meg Ryan, merely by invoking funny voices and glib observations.
The usual New Year's Eve dinner is custom-made for a romantic evening with one's partner. And is it merely coincidence that a single bottle of champagne is just the perfect size for two people to consume and metabolize in such a way as to encourage copulation. In fact, the whole New Year's Eve celebration is practically a choreographed fertility dance, designed to promote the propagation of the species.
For a long time, I didn't understand why the preeminent national symbol of the changing year was the dropping of the ball in New York's Times Square. I mean, what the hell? A ball dropping? If it's some kind of sports metaphor, it's egregiously stupid, since a dropped ball is almost universally a bad thing in any sport. And it's not even "dropping," really, it's more accurately "gently falling," like the "unnecessarily slow dipping mechanism" used to "kill" James Bond back in the "1960s."
But then I noticed the greater symbolism, working on any number of levels. The term "ball dropping" is itself often used to represent the descension of the male testes, evincing sexual maturity and readiness to engage in the physical act of love. Or perhaps the ball represents the female's egg, patienting inching toward fertilization, presaging the birth of a new year. More brazenly, we need only watch how the long, cylindrical shaft slowly penetrates the round, swollen sphere until the moment when it is completely consumed, at which point the whole thing lights up, fireworks go off and everyone screams with passionate delight. It's so obviously dirty, in fact, that it's sort of surprising they show it on broadcast television.
Alas, I am too sick to dine and party with my loved one this year. But the notion still holds strong: I pass into 2009 flush with the pride and confidence that comes with having J. to kiss every night. With her, every night is like New Year's Eve, only without the hangover the following day.
Some banquet hall deserted,
Whose lights are fled, whose garlands dead,
And all but he departed!"
- Thomas Moore
Valentine's Day gets all the publicity, but in my opinion New Year's Eve is the most insidiously romantic night of the year. While Valentine's Day is overt and demonstrative, New Year's Eve is sly and subversive. New Year's Eve inspires an unspoken but pervasive conflict between companionship and loneliness, brought into stark contrast by the end of one year and the beginning of another. The formal transition from one year to the next only seems arbitrary when you're not the person looking around for a hand to hold.
One of the most enduring New Year's Eve traditions is the kiss-at-midnight, a looming peer-pressurized moment in the year of any desperately single individual. This desperation has been known to manifest in all sorts of unhealthy ways, from ill-considered dates to impulsive late-night post-boozing Girls Gone Wild purchases.
The touchstone romantic comedy of this generation, When Harry Met Sally, features a climactic scene at a New Year's Eve party in Manhattan. "Harry" alludes to the evening's expectations when he intones, "it's not because I'm lonely, and it's not because it's New Year's Eve. I came here tonight because when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible." This movie, for all its modern-day wisdom, gave misplaced hope to millions of guys who look like Billy Crystal that they could land a babe who looked like Meg Ryan, merely by invoking funny voices and glib observations.
The usual New Year's Eve dinner is custom-made for a romantic evening with one's partner. And is it merely coincidence that a single bottle of champagne is just the perfect size for two people to consume and metabolize in such a way as to encourage copulation. In fact, the whole New Year's Eve celebration is practically a choreographed fertility dance, designed to promote the propagation of the species.
For a long time, I didn't understand why the preeminent national symbol of the changing year was the dropping of the ball in New York's Times Square. I mean, what the hell? A ball dropping? If it's some kind of sports metaphor, it's egregiously stupid, since a dropped ball is almost universally a bad thing in any sport. And it's not even "dropping," really, it's more accurately "gently falling," like the "unnecessarily slow dipping mechanism" used to "kill" James Bond back in the "1960s."
But then I noticed the greater symbolism, working on any number of levels. The term "ball dropping" is itself often used to represent the descension of the male testes, evincing sexual maturity and readiness to engage in the physical act of love. Or perhaps the ball represents the female's egg, patienting inching toward fertilization, presaging the birth of a new year. More brazenly, we need only watch how the long, cylindrical shaft slowly penetrates the round, swollen sphere until the moment when it is completely consumed, at which point the whole thing lights up, fireworks go off and everyone screams with passionate delight. It's so obviously dirty, in fact, that it's sort of surprising they show it on broadcast television.
Alas, I am too sick to dine and party with my loved one this year. But the notion still holds strong: I pass into 2009 flush with the pride and confidence that comes with having J. to kiss every night. With her, every night is like New Year's Eve, only without the hangover the following day.
