New Year's Eve parties

In My Humble Opinion
41

I’ve only once gone to a public NYE party (at a hotel ballroom), with the woman I was dating at the time, and another couple. That was when I was in my mid-20s, close to 30 years ago. There was a live band, and probably a few hundred people there. It included an overnight stay in the hotel, so we were able to safely have a few drinks.

But, since then, I’ve gone to NYE parties every year, at someone’s house. It’s rarely been big gatherings (often just another couple or two), and while there’ll be alcohol, no one overindulges, since someone will have to drive home afterwards.

42

The last few years I’ve gone to a small house party at a friend’s house; one of the board games and nibbles type, any drunken shenanigans being restricted to said friend’s son, who might pop in for a bit. In my early 30s, I was generally one of the younger ones there, with the oldest being in his 60s.

I also worked a few years as a bouncer, and that was a HUGE night for nightclubs, bars and I drove past a lot of house parties on the way home.

The one year I lived in a city and was on crack o’ dawn shift New Years Day so in bed early, everyone spilled out into the street at midnight and started singing ‘Auld Lang Syne’. Multiple house parties worth of people. I went out and said happy new year to a few neighbours and went back to bed. None of my housemates got back in 'til I was about ready to head out to work.

This is England, but the concept of a new year’s party seems healthy enough to me.

43

I’ve been to many, I’ve bartended a few that were epic, but for the last decade or so I’ve spent the evening hunkered down with the wife, trying to keep the pets calm through all the idjits with their fireworks and pretending the neighborhood is downtown Fallujah.

44

As a kid we always went to parties at our church on NYE. Once in college in the 80s, a girlfriend and I made the mistake of going to a party at a skating rink. We thought it would be fun, and it was, but most of the attendees were jr. high age. And they kept playing that stupid “Let’s go…to a party! To a party! To a party!” song.

In my band days New Year’s was always the most lucrative gig of the year, and those parties were of the stereotype booze galore and everyone kissing everyone else at midnight type.

45

I’ve never been a NYE person. Of all the holidays NYE seems the stupidest & most arbitrary to me. Yeah, let’s stay up late because we change a page on a calendar (& fewer & fewer people even use paper calendars anymore). :rolleyes:

I remember being at a party, in HS, leaving & going home about 10ish because I just didn’t ‘feel it’.

This year, as usual, I’ll be home. Might watch the ball drop from the TV in the den or might watch it in bed; either way, I’ll be lights out shortly after midnight.
OTOH, NYD will mark my 20th year in the Polar Bear Club!

46

It seems to me that nowadays people are more more likely to go to restaurant/bar/hotel “parties” than ones in private homes.

47

Seven (7) hours left to go here on the West coast … I don’t think I’m going to make it.

In fact at 74 I’ll be lucky to make it to the bathroom in time lol

48

I wonder if delayed parenthood has something to do with it. NYE is something you do in your 20s. In the 50’s, you had kids at 20. Today, you have kids at 30. So in the 50’s, your kids were there to witness and remember you going out to parties. Today, those kids either aren’t born yet, or they are born but their parents are too old to party, so the only way to notice anyone partying on NYE is to be 20 yourself. And you’re way past 20.

49

I find this to be a strange statement. Are you under the impression or in your experience does everyone loose touch with all their friends at 30 or after having kids and have no interest in spending time with those friends?

50

I’ve been to house parties and country-club/venue parties (though not huge-ticket ones) with a singles group I used to belong to. But in 2001, it was this singles group that introduced me to a local small town’s tradition-- “First Night”, in Haddonfield, NJ.

Some other small towns do this–for the price of a badge (about fifteen bucks), you can get into entertainment acts all over town. In this case, there were musicians of every stripe, actors, comedians, magicians, usually some kind of Celtic rock or folk band, Elvis impersonators, Beatle impersonators. Occasionally, there were some fairly famous names–they had The Amazing Kreskin a few times, and the disco band The Trammps (you know… “Disco Inferno”). At nine, they had a countdown in the square for kids, and at twelve, the real countdown…complete with fireworks and an imported Mummer or two. The last few years, the fireworks were only at nine for the kids’ countdown. Last year, the midnight countdown had to be canceled because of extreme cold–the food trucks even had to bail that night. (For some reason, though, the Trammps didn’t extend their performance fifteen minutes and count down with their audience indoors.) Anyway, I’ve always thought it was a great idea for people who weren’t big drinkers, who liked the arts, or who couldn’t really afford the big-ticket hotel parties. All of which apply to me.

For the past ten years, my sister and brother-in-law and I help care for my stroke-patient mother. I go over there (to the house where we grew up–they moved in with her) several nights a week and one full day a weekend, and on special occasions to let them have the time off. The deal is, they let me have Christmas Eve and I let them have New Year’s Eve…but for the past several years, they haven’t been staying out until midnight or anywhere near, and when they get in, they tell me to go on down to Haddonfield. So I’d catch a few acts and do the countdown. (Before the caregiving started, I’d go with friends, but it was harder to invite them along when I didn’t know if or when I’d be going…though sometimes I’d meet up there with a friend of mine who’d go on her own.)

Well, this year, after twenty years of doing First Night, Haddonfield has quit. I asked one of the shopkeepers in the area why, and she told me it just hadn’t been as profitable for them. (Seemed to ME to have been as busy as ever, but I wasn’t doing the bean-counting.) So I just ended up hanging out with my sister when they got back–which was rather nice, anyway. (Most of my friends already had their own plans, and I couldn’t very well invite myself.) It’s just a shame that they stopped doing a popular and well-liked tradition. I hope they’ll re-instate it, or that another nearby town will pick it up.

But it did seem to me that fewer people were staying for the midnight countdown even before this. I’ve noticed that people (at least in my area) seem to be making less of a big deal of New Year’s Eve lately…either celebrating with house parties, or just with their own families.

51

I’ve heard people swear by Pedialyte as a hangover cure (and Pediasure is also used for this purpose).

Yesterday I saw a TV ad for Pediasure, which seems to be suspiciously timed…

52

I’m not sure what you are hypothesizing here. But by way of counter-example, my first child was born when I was 30, and I threw a New Year’s Eve party that extended (in a small way) beyond midnight, as guests continued working on a jigsaw puzzle we’d started. And my adult children attended, along with my daughter-in-law.