Out With the Old, In With the New
Didn’t we just go through this last year
The moving hand has writ, the sands are running out inside the hourglass, and the countdown is beginning. People are gathering for one last climactic fling, one last hurrah, one more chance to make things right.
Nowhere is this more evident than in Times Square, NYC where the annual New Year’s Eve festivities will be the focus of attention of a billion people across the world via satellite coverage.
The actual crowd that shows up to celebrate in the cold frigid New York night will number in the hundreds of thousands, some say a million. But as many as possible that can jam into the always popular and fabled Crossroads of the World will show up.
The ceremonies will commence officially at 6 p.m. and end up with the final countdown at 11:59 pm. The entranced crowd will witness and count down the final seconds of the annual ceremony as the giant ball drops and issues in the New Year.
It is the end of the year. All the hopes and the dreams, the grief and the tears, the victories and defeats will all soon be yesterday’s news.
The drama and the trauma, the agony and the ecstasy, and the romances and rivalries will all be resolved and tucked away into their proper spaces and places.
Some will be taken up again, but most will end up in the dustbin of history.
People will be partying, laughing, and hanging out with each other.
There will be hugging and hollering, wonder and awe all displayed by various people at different times.
There will be fireworks, parties at selected restaurants, and music to rock the night away. Scheduled headliner performers this year will include Megan Thee Stallion, Tyla, Jelly Roll, Maria Beccera, and 30 other artists.
The mood is always festive. The excitement is pounding in your ears, the adrenalin has you so pumped up you barely notice the cold, and your head is on a swivel from trying to take it all in.
It doesn’t matter so much what we do or who we do it with. All the sharing and caring with our significant others, our children, and new friends and old will all be on display.
We will put aside old grudges, forge new alliances, and party like there is no tomorrow. It is a symbolic and physical performance of street drama and fanfare mixed with nostalgia, hope, joy, and serenity.
It is the one time of the year when we are all united in looking forward instead of looking back. We all share the same optimism, the same hopes and dreams, the same sense of unity.
This year will be different, this year will be special, and this will be the year we make it big. We will all be able to resolve our issues, fine-tune our inconsistencies away, and achieve whatever we want to do.
It is all right there, just a wink and a blink away, and anybody can watch it for free on TV. Especially those that don’t like crowds, because it will be jam-packed with revelers ready to party till they drop.
If you don’t like being jostled around by crowds of drunken, howling partyers in the freezing cold, watching the festivities on TV is definitely the better option.
Many people only go once in their lives, but if you go, you will most definitely always remember it.
New Year’s Eve is no time for depression, no time for doom and gloom. It is all about triumph and exaltation, celebrations and ceremonies, prosperity and fulfilment.
A few fun facts about the ceremony…
- The ball weighs 11,875 pounds.
- It’s composed of 2,688 crystal triangles, of varying sizes.
- Each crystal belongs to one of nine design patterns, such as the Gift of Love, the Gift of Goodwill, the Gift of Imagination, the Gift of Harmony, the Gift of Wonder, the Gift of Serenity, the Gift of Fortitude, the Gift of Happiness and the Gift of Wisdom.
It’s that time of year again. It is beauty, it is chaos, it is a rite of passage.
Time for hope, time to dream for a better year, world, and life.
We do it every year. We are doing it soon. We are all connected…