You don’t have to party to celebrate every New Year
By Jessica Berget, Opinions Editor
A lot of people would dread the idea of staying home alone on New Year’s Eve—I know I did. However, being horribly congested with a head-cold and having my only friend busy that day meant that I had to do exactly that. Despite my initial dismay, this year was probably the most personally gratifying New Year’s I have ever had, and now I think everyone should celebrate New Year’s by themselves at least once in their life.
The New Year is a cause for a great celebration, but that doesn’t mean you have to go out partying and get drunk to commemorate it. Like any holiday, there is a lot of pressure to celebrate as much as possible, and New Year’s is a prime example. Celebrating New Year’s usually means partying till the wee hours of the morning, drinking, and doing other inebriating substances. Although this is arguably a much more fun way to ring in the New Year, that doesn’t mean you have to do it every single year, nor should you.
Drinking and partying have become the cultural norm for celebrating any holiday and occasion, and I think this is something that we should ease up on, especially when it comes to ringing in a New Year.
New Year’s Eve isn’t really known for being a day of relaxing, but it should be. I appreciate wanting to have the greatest last day of the year before the new one begins, but that doesn’t mean you have to get awfully drunk. There is honestly no better way to start the new year than by waking up from a peaceful and restful slumber—and not being hungover.
New Year’s should be a day to celebrate all the accomplishments you’ve made in the past year. It should be a time for reflecting on the previous year and thinking about what made it great or awful and what you want to do to make the next year even better. Even if the previous year sucked, there is still a lot you could learn by reflecting on what made it bad and what you can do to change it. It could also be the day you get a head-start on your resolutions, which is almost impossible to do when you’re drunk or trying to sleep off a hangover.
Start your year off right by doing something you love to do, or something that’s on your list of goals for 2018. One of my goals was to start painting more, so I was doing exactly that when midnight struck. It’s a great start to following through with your resolutions if you have trouble keeping up with them, and it makes you feel positive about the rest of the year to come.
