The let downs of the New Years celebration and resolutions and where this tradition started.
By: Arnold Bornstein
Here we go again! It’s another new year and the common pattern is that we are supposed to be happy, make resolutions, and reflect upon life and the passage of time. Yet the real pattern usually follows for many of us, that the pursuit of happiness is often elusive, that resolutions are short-lived, and that everyday routines soon take over.
It’s frustrating because the new year represents, at least symbolically, a break with the past, a celebration of the present, and a renewal for the future. For the most part though, it seems that many people do resolve to try to make things better for themselves and their families and friends and for the world around them. This year, however, it’s even a little tougher, with continuing bloodshed in Iraq and other areas, the specter of terrorism, and the varying tragedies affecting humanity throughout the world.
In a 1949 movie, "A Letter to Three Wives," written and directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, the scene is at a New Year’s Eve house party and two friends are quarreling loudly.
Two other people nearby are listening.
One says: "Can’t we have some peace in the house, even on New Year’s Eve?"
The other responds: "You got it mixed up with Christmas. New Year’s Eve is when people go back to killing each other."
As an incurable optimist, I continue to believe in the future and in humanity eventually coming to its senses. I don’t like the option of thinking about the unthinkable.
Perhaps we make too much of New Year’s Eve and the anticipation too frequently leads to a letdown. My remembrances of new years past go way back to my high school days, when what was considered one of the most important things in life was being able to give a coherent answer when asked the question: "So what are you doing New Year’s Eve?"
I fantasized about an ideal evening on New Year’s Eve, but it never materialized in high school. I remember in two different years my group of friends and I were supposedly invited to house parties, one in Brooklyn one year and the other in the Cedarhurst section of neighboring Nassau County the next year.
Both parties were the usual disasters, and a New York City patrol car dropped by one of them in response to a neighbor’s complaint about noise and a minor brawl was narrowly averted at the other. Afterwards, we could never pin down who actually received the invitations to go, or even if we had actually been invited, but that’s the way it was.
In the Navy, particularly when at sea, all you had was an aching loneliness for home and the persistent fantasy of an ideal evening on New Year’s Eve. Actually, I apparently did it the old fashioned way and didn’t start having truly happy New Year’s Eves until after marriage.
On one occasion after being married only a couple years, my wife and I and our cousins ventured to Manhattan on New Year’s Eve, visited a few clubs and then headed for Times Square and 42nd Street, but the closest we could get was 49th Street, seven blocks from the real action. We haven’t tried it since.
Did you know that Western nations have been celebrating Jan. 1 as New Year’s Day for only some 400 years? Even though it’s considered the oldest of holidays and goes back about 4,000 years in ancient Babylon. In 2000 B.C., the Babylonians were marking the New Year with the first new moon after the first day of spring.
The Romans continued celebrating the new year in late March, but eventually they synchronized the holiday with the sun. The Roman Senate designated Jan. 1 as the beginning of the new year in 153 BC. Julius Caesar, in what became known as the Julian Calendar, established Jan. l once again as the new year in 46 B.C. To synchronize the calendar with the sun, however, the year was stretched to 445 days.
The Church Council of Tours had other ideas and in 567 AD it abandoned Jan. 1 in favor of March, varying the day to coincide with the Vernal Equinox, the first day of spring. In 1582, the date was moved back to Jan. l by Pope Gregory XIII, in what became the Gregorian Calendar.
So there you now have probably more than you wanted to know as to why you were doing what you were doing the other night on New Year’s Eve. And by the way, the ancient Babylonians even had New Year’s resolutions, the most popular being the New Year’s resolution to return borrowed farm equipment (no kidding).
During the holiday season, we had to drive back and forth between New Jersey and New York several times. I latently and belatedly noticed, and remarked to my family, that New Jersey has substantially less street lighting, even on major thoroughfares, compared to New York, where even secondary roads are well lighted.
A family member observed that it was a good sign for the new year that I, and I would hope many others, can simultaneously sweat the small stuff while also worrying about world peace.
Happy New Year!
Arnold Bornstein is a resident of Greenbriar at Whittingham.