Happy New Year!

The holidays are over and it’s a good thing.

New Year’s Eve used to be my favorite holiday. It still is, except these days I can’t be bothered to do anything about it. It’s hard to believe I used to stay up until at least 4 in the morning (a matter of pride!), make holiday food, dress up… There were cozy holiday parties at friends’ houses, one big drunken New Year bash that required buying tickets in advance (one glass of champagne included), a couple of Pittsburgh fiascos, the time my sister and I stayed home and got drunk, and another time she traveled to celebrate with me in Boston and we fought over a CD (which one was it?). There was the night spent playing “Wise and Otherwise,” and there was one badly planned New Year when a few of us (you know who you are) ended up in a hotel bar on Memorial Drive drinking “chocolate” martinis -- chocolate being a singe Hershey Kiss dropped in a glass. Even last year was eventful, as Movie Dictator and I ventured out to celebrate First Night.

I must be getting seriously old, because this year it was a challenge to just stay up until midnight. Initially, I’d made some plans to go out, but you know how it is: it was cold outside, and dark. I was playing a computer game. Movie Dictator was making a pizza. By the time I made up my mind not to go, it was too late to start a major movie, so we just puttered around through the rest of the night and watched an episode of “The Weakest Link” (British version). By the time that was over, the ball had just dropped in Times Square. So we said “Happy New Year” to each other, and then a few minutes later my parents called to laugh at us for being such wimps. Then we went to sleep. Whatever.

But maybe the best celebration are the ones done at home anyway? Like when I was a kid, and we had our tree and presents and holiday food and a new circus calendar in the hallway (my great aunt had connections), and there was always something good on TV (or was there? we always complained), and the phone started ringing right after midnight and kept ringing for the next couple of hours -- because in Moscow no one seemed to sleep on New Year’s Eve.