Why New Year’s Eve isn’t all it’s cracked up to be

New Year’s Eve is the one time of year I have learnt to dread. Every year I find myself slouching on my parent’s sofa at home with my Mum, my Dad that retires to bed before midnight, younger brother, and possibly my sister and her boyfriend. We make chit chat and pour a glass of champagne whilst we wait for the fireworks to light up our TV screen. By quarter past midnight, I’m hit with my annual rush of disappointment coupled with a dose of envy as I have to watch my sister, if she is not at her usual party, smooch her boyfriend into the New Year – you possibly could call me the Grinch of December 31^st.

New Year’s Eve does not only serve to make single people feel lonely, or remind those that cannot physically be with their partners of just how far away they are; the occasion itself is simply flawed. Yes, I understand that New Year’s Eve is a time to celebrate the year and all the people you love, but, drinking until silly O’clock in the morning then expecting to be able to wake up fresh on January 1st ready to be the ‘best you’ possible and smash your resolutions doesn’t seem realistic.

I like the idea of setting new goals and pushing yourself to try new things, but I think that everyone should strive to achieve as much as they can throughout the year. Not just on the last day of the year after 364 days of not trying to do new things and keeping to a normal routine, probably forgetting what the previous New Year’s resolution was!

The well-meaning and hopeful intent behind the resolutions are comparable to starting a new notebook on your first day back to school

Particularly as many of the resolutions that I hear people make are not just small things but huge lifestyle changes that require a lot of commitment. How many times do we hear the same old: ‘my New Year’s resolution is to lose two-stone, I ate loads of chocolate today so I think I am going to create a new one.’? The well-meaning and hopeful intent behind the resolutions are comparable to starting a new notebook on your first day back to school; you want your handwriting to be perfect and for it to remain consistently neat throughout the pages. But soon, it starts to deteriorate – undotted ‘i’s’ litter the page and the ‘t’s’ are accidentally left uncrossed. By the third day back, your writing is somewhat scrawny and rushed, it is too much effort to maintain the careful, swirly handwriting on the first page.

I wouldn’t mind the whole New Year New Me motto if I saw and heard of people making some positive changes to their lives instead of captioning it under their three-shots-down tipsy Instagram picture at midnight.

If the meaningless New Year’s resolutions aren’t irritating enough, then the fact that the majority of friends either plan to stay in or are busy with family makes the occasion so much worse. The only New Year’s that I planned to spend away from my family, I ended up breaking down on the motorway with my Mum and sister, one hour away from home and approximately two hours away from the party. I genuinely thought that I was going to be seeing the New Year stuck in a freezing cold car waiting for the AA. I managed to make the last hour of the party where I frantically tried to catch-up with everyone who was already drunk, which is never a good idea. Admittedly, it stands to date the most exciting New Year’s that I have had, although I am unsure whether it was worth the all-day hangover that came with it.

I am facing New Year’s head-on by working on New Year’s Day

This year, even if I did get an invitation to a New Year’s Eve party – which I haven’t – I’d have to turn it down due to my declining student bank balance. I am facing New Year’s head-on by working on New Year’s Day. At least I have an excuse to be a Grinch this New Year, not that I need any more reasons to kill its overrated buzz anyway.