Let's not cancel New Year's Eve
A counter to The New Yorker's cynical op-ed about childhood, grief, and enjoying life while you can.
On December 28, 2020, The New Yorker published an op-ed titled “Cancel New Year’s Eve Forever.” The writer, Sarah Miller, took a beating in the comments section for her ice cold, killjoy take on a beloved holiday—one of the only global celebrations free from religion, shady history, and inherent consumerism. I stayed up very late that night writing what the holiday means to me. This piece is intentionally (mostly) COVID-free because, despite the pandemic’s inescapable hold on life, some things can remain sacred. I hope you enjoy. And if you do, I hope you’ll like it + leave a comment, share it somewhere or with someone, and become a paid subscriber for $30 for the full year if you’re not already. Happy holidays!
From 1994-2006, my parents owned one of the only bars in Danville: a rural town of less than 5,000 people in central Pennsylvania. A dive joint on a dead end between the woods and the railroad tracks, Knight Tracks earned the nickname Knife Tracks for the rough crowd and frequent brawls.
New Year’s Eve was a hot night at Knight Tracks. They’d secure big regional acts like The Badlees and fill the place with every denim-clad, Budweiser-drinking local yokel within 20 miles. I knew not to get in my mom’s way as she teased out her curly black hair and rushed around the house in preparation for the night that, alone, determined whether I packed skimpy pb&js or got lunch money all year.
Growing up without money made rare moments of glittering festivity feel like the Met Gala. I had dirt under my fingernails and knotted hair down to my butt and the kids at school made fun of me for smelling like smoke, but my mom always managed to make me and my three sisters feel like queens on New Year’s Eve. She’d make time that day to put on a crockpot of little smokies drenched in tangy barbecue sauce and bake a tray of pigs in a blanket. Sometimes we even got a box of frozen TGI Friday’s mozzarella sticks—my favorite. We’d wash down the royal feast with our signature New Year’s cocktail, orange sherbet mixed with 7-UP, as we binged the Twilight Zone marathon in anticipation of midnight. That was the closest we got to a smoothie back then. Our little heads adorned in metallic top hats and crowns reading “HAPPY NEW YEAR,” when the ball dropped, we blew noisemakers and cheered until our lungs gave out. You couldn’t convince me there was any party grander and more exciting than the one happening in my living room. Even the one at Knight Tracks.
On New Year’s Day, my parents would fight through their hangovers to cook pork and sauerkraut: a Pennsylvania Dutch tradition for good luck. It was a running joke at the table that no one could pry the salt from my sister Dawn’s hands as a blizzard of crystals blanketed her mashed potatoes. I hated this meal with a passion. Sauerkraut made my stomach ache and I was averse to most meat. But I’d be damned if I was relieved from the table without clearing my plate. My mom was one of five raised by a single mother, a Sicilian immigrant, and she carried a legacy of no bite wasted. Disgust aside, I always felt a little luckier January 2nd.
We sold Knight Tracks when I was in high school. It burned down shortly after. In 2018, Dawn died of cervical cancer at 30 years old. The cancer had spread to her lungs where the tumor got loose, and she choked to death on her own blood. I can’t seem to grieve one without the other, our shared life as siblings inextricable from sweeping those sticky floors, searching for dollar bills on Sunday mornings. New Year’s Eve crystallizes into a snow globe of memory where my sister and the bar live gorgeous, enduring, impenetrable.
On New Year’s Eve 2018, I was four months into the throes of grief when my broken heart was pounded to dust. My best friend of 23 years, whom I’d just visited in Nashville a month prior as a surprise for her birthday, was diagnosed with stage IV metastatic adrenocortical carcinoma: a disease so rare, it’s found in one in every million Americans. Kathleen was a 5’10 modelesque blonde web designer who’d taught college classes at Temple University. She ran five miles a day and ate like a bird; she wasn’t supposed to catch a cold, let alone develop one of the most aggressive, rare cancers known to medicine. We made a resolution that New Year’s that she’d be the one to beat the odds. If anyone had the strong foundation of health to do it, surely it was her. But like Dawn, Kathleen’s cancer had spread rapidly to her lungs. And once it’s in your lungs, your fight is on the clock.
This time last year I was back in Danville, floating between my childhood home and Kathleen’s hospital room in a dissociative haze of anguish. Before she left her body on January 24th, we talked at length about the small stuff. How she wished, more than anything, that she could just go to the bar and have a beer, laugh as her red-headed British husband screamed at the Liverpool match. Walk her Great Dane, Burger, one last time, just to watch people cock their heads in confusion at this tall girl and her tall dog. Kathleen desperately wanted to celebrate New Year’s Eve, but her skeletal frame was bound to a bed, on oxygen, preparing to say goodbye “any day now” for three full weeks. I would have given a limb to be back in our Philly apartment, cheersing and posing for Polaroids in too much bronzer and never enough sequins, watching our feet for mice.
Because New Year’s Eve means so much me, I am inclined to protect it before it’s even brought up, kind of like those memes:
No one:
Absolutely no one:
Me: New Year’s Eve is the best holiday!
And because I’ve seen things vanish abruptly—Knight Tracks, Dawn, and Kathleen (among the more trivial pets, boyfriends, and plates of carbonara I wished would last forever)—I have an acute understanding of life’s brevity, and therefore the fervent urge to celebrate every chance I get. Have you ever met a dying person who regretted a party? Or who thought the pressure to celebrate a holiday outweighed the joy others derive from doing so? New Year’s Eve is a reminder that we still have another day, and if we’re lucky, another year. A 365-day shot at this glorious existence with the functioning lungs someone is praying for. This year has left people more hopeless than ever, and if the mere illusion of a fresh start on January 1st offers a modicum of respite to one person, then it is a holiday worth embracing.
Beyond childhood nostalgia and grief sharpening my perspective, I’ve long loved New Year’s Eve for its extravagance. Whether I’ve got a ticket to an open bar in the city or I’m melting into my couch, I enjoy the fleeting air of hedonism, even vicariously. Most of my daydreams traverse the complexities of human excess, and what better day to slip into this luxurious corner of my mind than New Year’s Eve? I love knowing someone, somewhere is eating oysters and drinking champagne across from the Eiffel Tower. Girls with names like Lux and Kaya are reapplying lipstick in Manhattan bathrooms while deep tech loops above, or something equally cliché and possible in a COVID-free world. Staying in even feels indulgent on New Year’s Eve, a satisfaction I’ve enjoyed both coupled and alone; there’s a smug defiance to being cozy at home that functions as a celebration all its own—one that is unequivocally 2020.
Reflecting on New Year’s Eves past, I savor the indelible memories made in a working-class family that taught me the joy of simplicity. Happiness was competing for whose noisemaker was the loudest, who could stay up the longest. The only remaining relics are some shoddy photos of pajamaed kids who could have never foreseen the pain and loss of years to come. I consider the good fortune of my health and grieve the two best friends I’ve ever had—women who made every day a celebration, even through 10 rounds of chemotherapy. I tell my nephews mommy loved sherbet punch and never fell asleep first.
This was beautiful. Thank you for sharing.
Loved this. Thank you!!