Let’s Not Expect Too Much From New Year’s Eve

It won’t erase a devastating year, no matter how festive we try to make it

“An optimist stays up until midnight to see the new year in. A pessimist stays up to make sure the old year leaves.” — William E. Vaughan

I’m what you might call a connoisseur of New Year’s Eve. I’ve spent quiet evenings at home and wild goth nights at Neo in Chicago. I’ve attended fancy shmancy galas at the Cleveland Museum of Art and I’ve walked alone to the corner store for a tin of smoked oysters and a cheap bottle of bubbly because that was all I could afford.

I have a tendency to expect too much from New Year’s Eve, under the best of circumstances. While my “12 Days of Christmas” celebration doesn’t technically end until January 5th, New Year’s Eve always feels like the last hurrah. It’s the end of the party, the tipping point after which we know we have to go back to our often-lackluster jobs, assuming we’re lucky enough to have one. This is 2020, after all.

Soon we’ll be vowing to return to the diets that fell by the wayside over the holidays and the quarantine months. Perhaps we’ll decide to participate in Sober January. We’ll make plans to de-clutter, be productive, watch Netflix less, be creative more.

If you’re like me, you’re probably craving a big salad at this point in the holiday fanfare, but everything I just described above? It really doesn’t sound like that much fun. It sounds like excess of a different sort — an excess of discipline, of atonement.

When we know what we’re facing on the other side of January 1st, is it any wonder we place too many expectations on New Year’s Eve?

My husband and I don’t always go out for this particular holiday, even when we’re not supposed to stay home for our own health and the greater good. But even when it’s just the two of us, I have the perfect evening mapped out in my head: A beautifully curated menu of appetizers. The right bottle of bubbly. Festive decorations. A gorgeous outfit. I even have expectations about how my husband should act. (Attentive, kind, and complimentary of both my appearance and the food I’ve prepared.)

Earlier today, as I was getting ready to wave goodbye to what’s been arguably the toughest year of my lifetime, I realized I was feeling even more pressure than usual — pressure to make sure the last day of 2020 is a good one.

There’s a little voice in my head telling me that this year, in particular, New Year’s Eve MUST BE FUN.

The holidays have been like that in general, though. We’ve told ourselves that if we just put up enough lights, if we make enough food, if we buy enough gifts, if we drink enough to dull our anxiety, if we force ourselves to be festive, then we’ll somehow be able to gloss over everything we’ve endured this year.

We’ll forget the uncertainty, the lives lost, the unemployment, the closed businesses. We’ll forget the missed celebrations, the vacations we couldn’t take, the family we couldn’t see, the hugs we couldn’t give, the quarantine birthdays when we tried to pretend everything was normal. We’ll forget all the activities our children had to forego, and I know those months in limbo are a lot more significant to my eight-year-old nephew than they are to my 48-year-old self.

We have done our best to create positive experiences throughout the year and to express our gratitude. I’m well aware that some of us have significantly more blessings to count than others, and my family and I are privileged to be among them.

But perpetual low-grade stress does a number on all of us, even the strongest and the most fortunate. I’ve noticed, in the latter part of the year, that my smile is a bit more forced, and the light in my eyes isn’t as bright as it normally would be.

Even when I truly am enjoying myself, I can’t help but feel like I’m going through the motions.

But back to New Year’s Eve. I’ve spent the past couple of days in the kitchen, prepping the sauerkraut and kielbasa for January 1st, and the appetizers for tonight.

I’ve made a batch of decadent yet chock-full-of-vegetables sausage dip to pop in the oven later. I fried polenta slices until crispy and caramelized onions to top them. I roasted cauliflower to go with a gorgeous red pepper pesto and whipped up a batch of creamy hummus. I made Susan Randolph’s deliciously spicy cheese ball with pecans and managed not to eat too much of it right out of the bowl.

In a little while, I’ll slice vegetables to serve with the hummus and select a couple of additional cheeses. I’ll remind my husband that he’s in charge of the relish tray and I’ll bribe him with a cookie tower. The Veuve Cliquot is chilling, a gift for my July birthday that I decided to save for tonight.

Then it will be time to shower and get dressed. It’s a quarantine New Year’s Eve party for two.

At least we didn’t have to worry about the right place to be at midnight, and the perfect outfit to wear. I’ve agonized, in the past, over my attire in particular.

Once, when we lived in Chicago and I was younger and more foolish than I am now, I marched into the downtown Marshall Field’s store around 4 p.m. on December 31st. I found the first available salesperson and announced that I hated shopping and despised seeing myself in the mirror but I needed a dress, stat.

That’s when I learned I’d really love to have a personal shopper, though I’ve never been able to afford to make that dream a reality. A couple of hours and $300 later, I had a gorgeous New Year’s Eve outfit that fit me like a glove. I also had a brand new credit card bill.

(In my defense, the dress was timeless and I loved it and I wore it for more than a decade until middle-aged midsection weight gain made that impossible. It still hangs in my closet, alternately taunting me and raising fond memories.)

Other years, I vowed not to spend money on new clothes and then had a meltdown in my closet trying to find something that fit and didn’t make me look like a sausage link.

It sounds so fickle, doesn’t it? Just like many of the things we fretted about before 2020.

As one of my friends posted on Facebook recently, “I still don’t know what I’m wearing to the living room on New Year’s Eve. I might not even go.”

Thanks for the perspective, 2020. Did the lesson have to be so harsh?

There’s nothing we can do tonight that will erase the memory of the past year.

There’s nothing that can happen tonight that will quell our fears about what’s coming next. We know in the dark corners of our minds that when the clock strikes midnight and it’s 2021 (finally!) it means absolutely nothing.

There is no miracle, no magic formula, that will automatically or immediately set the ship right again for those of us who have been lucky enough to survive this year.

And yet…

Sure, we can’t curate the perfect New Year’s Eve, because there’s no such thing. But we can still appreciate the symbolism of a fresh start and a collective sigh of relief as we watch 2020 fade away.

I don’t do resolutions anymore. Too often they were simply an excuse to pick out my flaws and vow to fix them in the coming 12 months. A recipe for a flawless Kathryn. This was unrealistic, counterproductive, and damaging.

I do, however, like to list good things that happened during the year. I sardonically commented, recently, that it would be difficult to find any for 2020, but that’s really not true. All I have to do is look at my calendar to see numerous things I can put on that list — household cookouts and game nights, socially distanced porch lunches, a disco dance party for just my husband and me.

And I sometimes like to pick a word for the coming year. I’m still narrowing it down, but “relax” is on my shortlist.

This doesn’t mean hanging out on the couch watching Netflix. I don’t need a reminder to do that!

It means easing the tension in my muscles and letting go of unproductive expectations (of myself, of others, and of situations).

It means a bit of Que Sera Sera — not that I’ll simply throw up my hands and say “whatever”, but that I’ll recognize that I cannot predict the future, nor am I singlehandedly responsible for how everything in the world will turn out.

So, as the afternoon wanes on December 31st, my hope for all of us is that we can relax a bit and not expect too much — of this night or of the coming year. Neither will be perfect, but they do have potential.

“We spend January 1st walking through our lives, room by room, drawing up a list of work to be done, cracks to be patched. Maybe this year, to balance the list, we ought to walk through the rooms of our lives … not looking for flaws but for potential.” — Ellen Goodman