What Makes A Great New Years' Eve? (originally published in 2017)

What Makes A Great New Years' Eve?

This is a question I've asked myself many times - what's the best way, or indeed the correct way, to see in the next year? Is it by reflecting on the successes and failures of the past 365, occasionally 366, days? Or is it better to let bygones be bygones and forget the things that didn't quite go to plan previously?

I've had all sorts of New Years' Eves. One involved driving around Malvern looking for a friend's pub to spend it in, to no avail. My six-foot-something pal Dave and I never did find it, though we probably visited every other public house in Worcestershire. Another time I bought a £50 ticket for an event in a big top set up in the grounds of a country park, complete with fireworks. Sadly the said fireworks merely served to guide me to the venue as it wasn't the easiest to find, and when I did I found getting into the tent much easier than getting out. Fearing imminent asphyxiation or aggro from the bouncers I ducked under the tent flap and got back home in time for Auld Lang Syne.

There are many similar stories (similar, albeit not identical) from many up and down the country. But are such ways of welcoming the next year, with their inevitable failure to come to fruition, merely a way to prove that the following year can't go any worse? Do we therefore subconsciously organise such events knowing they're doomed to fail? Perhaps this is all reading too much into the process, but I do wonder whether, compared to Xmas and birthdays, New Years Eve bashes are always going to struggle to meet particularly high expectations.

So what does make a perfect New Years Eve? Enormous amounts of alcohol? Making new friends for the night? The biggest set of fireworks compared to any other major city in the world? I think, personally, it's looking around at what you've got and saying that, whilst I'm aware what I'd like to improve next year, I have got this! Perhaps. Often, for all the forced impressiveness of New Years Eve, it is just another night, and perhaps it's the more everyday nature of it that's worth appreciating.