The lights come on, cities are being decorated, city squares, villages; houses are being dressed, and so are we. It sparkles everywhere, mulled wine is brewing on the streets, chestnuts are roasting, optimism is in the air even though everything around us is falling apart. “Holidays are coming, holidays are coming…” Sometimes the year that we are leaving behind was so catastrophic and horrible, that just entering a new year automatically means entering the best year ever, like it can’t be worse…And the feeling totally works on us!
We are buying gifts for our loved ones, to let them know that the new year will be better, that everything will be better… it has to be… ahead is a new start, a new time that, even though we don’t know what it will bring us, we should embrace joyfully, always with hope and belief that nothing can be as bad as it was, if it was bad. In that sense, we come up with resolutions which will motivate us to be better in the new year. We will promise ourselves something that we will mostly forget by morning. 😊 Like: “I’ll quit smoking, I swear on the elastic of my knee socks,” while our head is pounding and all we can think is, “May I drop dead if I ever drink again in the next year,” and in some far-off mental tab, we’re trying to figure out how to get home without missing the house. * Or we decide we must stop eating meat, like poor animals, surely, we will become vegetarian or vegan, all while scanning the roast platter at the holiday table, looking for ribs or that perfectly crispy skin. 😊. I personally always plan to make a new year’s resolution, but I always give up because I get caught up thinking about how to saw off heels on my red shoes and make them flat, because after a few hours of solo dancing or joining the party train, my feet are killing me. So, in the future, my resolution should be “sawed-off heels”. Real talk. I generally adore high heeled shoes, so this “resolution” isn’t going to happen, it’s going to be “It is what it is — I’ll just have to live with it”.
Ever since people started celebrating New Year’s Eve, it’s expected that the celebration must be joyful, fun and unforgettable... Maybe we should travel somewhere known for its phenomenal and crazy party? All New Years around the world, which are considered “the craziest”, are marked with some spectacular event which has become a long-standing tradition, so it’s hard to make a choice which one is the craziest among them. For example, New Years in New York at Times Square is famous for its crystal ball drop and gatherings of a large crowd.
In Sydney, Australia, New year’s is celebrated among the first places in the world and is famous for impressive fireworks over the Opera House.While Copacabana beach in Rio de Janeiro,, turns into the heart of a crazy party with live music, dance and firework, with people dressing in white for good luck. It’s completely wild in Edinburgh, Scotland, too, where people celebrate Hogmanay, a Scottish word for the last day of the previous year and a synonym for celebrating New Years the Scottish way, which includes concerts, street parties and fire-related customs.
When it comes to traveling, I had some incredible new year’s outside my country - in San Francisco, skiing through Europe, at the seaside, in Dalmatia - but I always preferred celebrations which weren’t as spectacular when it came to the number of people and visual sensations. I prefer smaller, more intimate gatherings, but at unusual places, which can truly make me believe in the wonder that the new year will be better... In that manner, for example, I would like to celebrate New Years in Amsterdam, in a small house by the water, with a view of the city from the canal’s perspective. Or in an apartment/ on a boat in Paris, under a bridge with the beauty of Paris in my eyes. Maybe I would find the celebration in an apartment on the roof of a skyscraper in New York City more spectacular than the one in Times Square. I would also like a celebration in Bali, at my friend’s beach cottage, my old neighbor Kostić, who we all used to call neighbor Kostić.
As a child, while I decorated the Christmas tree with my mom in our family apartment in Savamala, I imagined that it would be a celebration with dwarfs. Later, in 1975 when Tolkien’s first edition of “Hobbit” was published, and I read it in a beat, I wished I could be with those little creatures in their Hobbit home, celebrating the wildest night, because what is wilder than celebrating New Years with Bilbo Baggins, Pippin, Frod and Gandalf? Real talk. 😊
Many years later, I found out that in France, in Alsace, there is a Hobbit house, while in Normandy there is a house of 7 dwarfs. ❤️ Those French are such legends! I’m running there. Among all the magnificent and unusual places, I would like to spend New Years at, it would be cool to spend it in a tree house, which I heard existed in Costa Rica. I also read that it’s an unforgettable celebration to spend New Years in snow, at a beach in the south of Iceland. New Years snow picknick! Hooray! Apart from the fire in Edinburgh or wearing white at Copacabana beach, there are other new year’s celebrations which include quirky traditions, symbols and customs. For example, in a lot of cultures in South America, there is a tradition of throwing away old or unnecessary stuff through the windows, to get rid of bad luck and start the New year with a fresh start. In Spain, there’s a tradition to eat 12 grapes at midnight, one grape for each bell toll, which symbolizes luck for each month of the upcoming year. Now, if you’re organizing a new year’s celebration yourself, my advice is to ditch the traditional Russian salad, roast, cakes and flowing alcohol until the dawn. Try to kill the monotony by organizing a masked ball or a themed party such as ‘30s or ‘80s, with music to match. To skip bothering with making resolutions, you can either get fortune cookies or write funny messages which guests would draw out a suitable jar. The funnier the messages, the better. If there isn’t enough money for serious decorations, for fireworks, Christmas lights and other New year’s gadgets, make the celebration in dark, with a subtle light, and let the guests shine with something they would bring along – a bracelet, necklace, crown… You can add a fun touch by having guests make their own cocktails from various, often not incompatible, drinks which you bought. I remember one year; my friends and I organized a competition in various social games. The whole space was decorated as a playroom, somewhere you could play kid’s roulette, somewhere Jenga, somewhere Pictionary… The group moved from spot to spot, the music was funky, and we laughed out loud. If nothing else works, you can always include the above-mentioned grape-eating or white-wearing, why not? I’m only not certain about the part with throwing away old things through the window, although to be honest, I could certainly use that. However, wherever you celebrate New year's "may the New Year bring you the courage to break your resolutions early"! 🎄
JJ Beba
*As Melanie White said “Every New Year’s I have the same question: ‘How did I get home?
