Countdown to Nothing

Do we really need calendars? Most of the time, I'm fine with knowing what day it is, whether I'm close to the weekend, if there's a vacation coming up, if I've missed Mother's Day by four weeks.

But I've gotta say, there is no calendar day more lame than New Year's Eve. There doesn't seem to be any reason for celebrating this day other than the fact that we're happy that the earth has made it around the sun again. For 4,500,000,000 years, the earth has managed to make it, I don't think it needs our help anymore. Since it's pretty old, I don't think the earth even remembers what its birthday is. So can we dispense with this holiday altogether?

If the Chinese calendar is the correct New Year, and ours is way off, that would be a huge embarrassment in the first place. But heaping on all the other traditions on New Year's make me hate it even more. Let's review them all:

1) The Resolution. This barely needs mentioning, because it's so retarded. But we're honestly supposed to think we're going to change our ways for the better because it's a new calendar year? What person thinks like that? Name a doctor that says "Hey, you really should stop smoking, your heart could give out and you'll probably get cancer. Oh yeah, and January 1st is coming up, so there's that."

2) The Pressure to Do Something. I think my fondest memories of New Year's Eve come when I was about 7-11 years old. Back then, it was either a middle finger to the convention of making kids go to sleep earlier than they wanted to, or fighting my inner clock's bedtime and challenging myself to stay up and watch Dick Clark. That's about everybody's peak, I think. Now, there's this strange pressure to do something that night, like everyone is 22. I'd rather be home most of the time, why does this change for an arbitrary 1o seconds? Which brings us to...

3) The Countdown. In the grand cosmic scheme, what do these ten seconds matter? I once wondered if all our math was wrong, and the Gods on the Astral Plane just looked down at us and thought we were completely stupid, or a failed creation. "Len, these morons think 2 + 2 equals 4, why did we let them crawl out of the mud again?" Well, since when do we take credit for the year's birthday? If you think about it, our countdown counts down to nothing. It's a moment that doesn't actually exist, because as soon as it arrives, it's already the New Year. Yeah, confetti drops, Ryan Seacrest gets to tell us how amazing it all is, and Carrie Underwood claps her hands like a seal, but what does that moment really represent? I already have a depressing annual mortality reminder scorched into my memory, it's called my birthday. Do I really need another landmark to remind me of all the shit that I didn't do in my life? Since we've been looking around with blank faces after having counting down to zero for so long, we've now got another tradition piled on...

4) The New Year's Kiss. I like kissing my wife. She's a good kisser. Hell, if she wasn't, I probably would have married someone else. You end up kissing that person a lot, so choose the right one. Just a little romantic advice there. Anyway, the Pressure to Do Something is often conflated with the Pressure to Be Next To Someone You'd Like to Kiss on New Year's Eve. If you think about it, this tradition was born out of drunk people in the 19-aughts wanting an excuse to hook up. "Heck, I got to zero...Ethel was standing there...so I tugged on her bloomers and we started necking!" But what about those people who go to a party with a bunch of friends, all of whom happen to have a significant other or prostitute, and when the ball drops, they pretend to know the words to Auld Lang Syne and knock back their swinging champagne glass like they're going to the chair. We've all been that person. We already have a holiday where we have to be reminded that we're all alone, it's called Valentine's Day.

So that's enough complaining. I promise my next post will not be a complaint, but something I like. It is the New Year, after all, and that's my resolution: one post a month will not be a complaint.