Unlike the New Years of our younger days, my wife and I have a very low key way of celebrating the arrival of the New Year.
Actually, until recently, we celebrated the arrival of the New Year with our grandchildren when they were small while our children went to parties or other things for the holiday.
Now we celebrate alone when we can stay awake until midnight. A toast of grape juice at the stroke of midnight, and a kiss from my wife is as wild as it gets at our house now. As someone who used to think beer and champagne was the only drink to have on New Year’s Eve, I can tell you the mornings after feel a lot better when you only have grape juice.
I have also quit making New Year’s resolutions, because the only things we ever have to resolve not to do anymore, falls under the headings of “Tastes Good, or Feels Good,” two of my favorite things. I do believe a new year can be like getting a new start. The calendar is clean with no marks, good or bad on it. It’s like when you started school each year as a kid, there were no F’s or E’s on your grade card— yet. That is really a bad analogy for me, since I never managed too many of those E’s while I was in school anyway.
The most fun I can remember having on New Years Eve is as a kid in the 1950s, when I was finally old enough to go to the Uptown Theater for their monster movie marathon.
In the ’50s the Uptown Theater in downtown Sedalia always held the marathon, which featured monster movies until well after midnight. I remember just before the stroke of mid-night the movie would stop, and the lights would come on; and the audience would count down the seconds until midnight; then “Auld-Lang-Syne” would be played, and the audience would sing along.
Guys lucky enough to have brought a date could be seen kissing their girlfriends while the rest would shake hands at the arrival of the New Year, and wish everyone around them a Happy New Year. (I was a hand shaker of course.) Then the lights would go off again, and it was time for the main scary movie. The audiences for those marathons were for the most part made up of kids and young adults.
I’m sure that is because older people preferred to actually hear a movie they were watching, and those marathons were anything but quiet. As I recall I saw “The Thing” with James Arness as the monster from outer space, for the first time at one of those midnight showings. (Fortunately I had a lot of friends to walk home with after that movie.) I am sure there have been many great New Years celebrations through the years that I have been a part of, and if I could remember them I might be able to say I enjoyed them too, but of course that was before my grape juice days.
This year I will once again lift a glass with my wife, as we welcome in the New Year. I have not decided on which grape juice to have for the occasion yet. What goes with potato chips; white or red grape juice? “Happy New Year”
