Should auld acquaintance be forgot? Yes.
When I was a child, my parents' New Year's Eve parties were not precisely chaotic studies in decadence, dissolution and debauchery, but once when I was in elementary school, I did accidentally walk in on two of their married friends necking in the bathtub in an upstairs bathroom. This wouldn't have been quite so disturbing for the three of us if the couple in the tub had been married to each other.
Another time, when I was in middle school, my mother was having so much fun at the New Year's Eve dinner party that she and my father were hosting that she forgot to serve dinner. It is an indication of the amount of liquor being consumed that it was only when the dozen or so adults were gathered around the television to watch the great ball descend on Broadway that one of the guests first asked whether the group was ever going to eat.
Their parties were actually pretty standard fare for that era and that geography: The hard-drinking, hard-working, hard-playing suburbs of New York City in the 1970s. Moreover, it didn't have to be New Year's Eve for the parties to cross the line between boisterous and bacchanalian. They had some doozies in the summer, too.
My father is Armenian and his first name is Aram, and one July they had a costume soiree they called a "Harem with Aram." This politically incorrect affair confused me even as a sixth-grader since, as far as I knew, neither harems nor polygamy figured prominently in Armenian culture. It was, like most of their parties, a fairly raucous bash. One couple brought goats.
My parents loved their neighbors and they loved to entertain, but I always suspected there was something a little desperate in their friends' behavior at those parties, especially the ones on Dec. 31. I had the sense that for many of the grownups, all that alcohol and all those cigarettes and all that forced bonhomie was a camouflage for wistfulness and regret.
The reality is that New Year's Eve has the potential to be spectacularly depressing. Often we look back on the last year with a combination of disappointment and self-loathing. We have resolutions for the purpose of trying to make the coming year better -- to see if we can somehow stop making the same mistakes year after year ... after year.
Consequently, I don't make resolutions, and it's not simply because I know I am a total lost cause. Likewise, I tend to steer clear of most New Year's Eve parties because there are too many middle-aged ghosts from my childhood at the punch bowls.
On the other hand, I am a big fan of the Best Night and First Night celebrations that so many towns and cities now organize. Even Bristol, a reasonably small Green Mountain hamlet, this year boasts among its Best Night entertainers magician Tom Verner, composer and musician Pete Sutherland and the delightful women's a cappella group, Maiden Vermont.
The performers and performances I've savored over the years at Burlington, Vermont's annual First Night -- all of whom will be back again this year -- include Anais Mitchell, Circus Smirkus, Kamikaze Comedy and Spotlight on Dance. I was a Lyric Theatre board member for six years, which means I have also savored that group's annual New Year's Eve cabaret close to a dozen times.
Now, I have not shared my New Year's Eve demons with you this morning because I want to discourage anyone from partying in a reasonable fashion this coming Thursday night. But I have found that for me, the best way to keep longing and sorrow at bay on New Year's Eve may be to look neither backward nor forward, but instead to live entirely in the moment with the songs and stories of some of Vermont's premier entertainers.
May 2010 bring us all peace and wonder and joy. Happy New Year.
(This column originally appeared in the Burlington Free Press on December 27, 2009.)
Another time, when I was in middle school, my mother was having so much fun at the New Year's Eve dinner party that she and my father were hosting that she forgot to serve dinner. It is an indication of the amount of liquor being consumed that it was only when the dozen or so adults were gathered around the television to watch the great ball descend on Broadway that one of the guests first asked whether the group was ever going to eat.
Their parties were actually pretty standard fare for that era and that geography: The hard-drinking, hard-working, hard-playing suburbs of New York City in the 1970s. Moreover, it didn't have to be New Year's Eve for the parties to cross the line between boisterous and bacchanalian. They had some doozies in the summer, too.
My father is Armenian and his first name is Aram, and one July they had a costume soiree they called a "Harem with Aram." This politically incorrect affair confused me even as a sixth-grader since, as far as I knew, neither harems nor polygamy figured prominently in Armenian culture. It was, like most of their parties, a fairly raucous bash. One couple brought goats.
My parents loved their neighbors and they loved to entertain, but I always suspected there was something a little desperate in their friends' behavior at those parties, especially the ones on Dec. 31. I had the sense that for many of the grownups, all that alcohol and all those cigarettes and all that forced bonhomie was a camouflage for wistfulness and regret.
The reality is that New Year's Eve has the potential to be spectacularly depressing. Often we look back on the last year with a combination of disappointment and self-loathing. We have resolutions for the purpose of trying to make the coming year better -- to see if we can somehow stop making the same mistakes year after year ... after year.
Consequently, I don't make resolutions, and it's not simply because I know I am a total lost cause. Likewise, I tend to steer clear of most New Year's Eve parties because there are too many middle-aged ghosts from my childhood at the punch bowls.
On the other hand, I am a big fan of the Best Night and First Night celebrations that so many towns and cities now organize. Even Bristol, a reasonably small Green Mountain hamlet, this year boasts among its Best Night entertainers magician Tom Verner, composer and musician Pete Sutherland and the delightful women's a cappella group, Maiden Vermont.
The performers and performances I've savored over the years at Burlington, Vermont's annual First Night -- all of whom will be back again this year -- include Anais Mitchell, Circus Smirkus, Kamikaze Comedy and Spotlight on Dance. I was a Lyric Theatre board member for six years, which means I have also savored that group's annual New Year's Eve cabaret close to a dozen times.
Now, I have not shared my New Year's Eve demons with you this morning because I want to discourage anyone from partying in a reasonable fashion this coming Thursday night. But I have found that for me, the best way to keep longing and sorrow at bay on New Year's Eve may be to look neither backward nor forward, but instead to live entirely in the moment with the songs and stories of some of Vermont's premier entertainers.
May 2010 bring us all peace and wonder and joy. Happy New Year.
(This column originally appeared in the Burlington Free Press on December 27, 2009.)
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