We have been celebrating the new year all wrong. All around the world, we gather in throngs outside musical landmarks, over bridges, city centers, and if you live in New York City, beneath a dazzling ball. We pour champagne and sparkling wines, and attempt to sing a song written in a dead language (yes any English spoken before Twitter and texting is considered dead) and reserved for boy scout jamborees. Those of us fortunate enough to have a breath mint and a better half can look forward to a kiss at the stroke of midnight, provided there is a clock nearby to tell us when. Just a week before, even single folks could swap mint for mistletoe and still slip a stranger some tongue. It’s no wonder our years continue on as repetitious plights of hopelessness, impracticable goals, and unforgiving debt. Our New Year’s celebrations are lacking in carnality.
We should be taking cues from the very folks who pioneered these celebrations to begin with. The Greeks and the Romans. Yes, we have somehow managed to lessen their end-of-year festivities, which included public banquets, grand orgies, and even beatings into a monotonic orchestral countdown.
“Some historians trace it back to ancient Rome. The Romans knew how to party, and would throw a big celebration every year called the Festival of Saturnalia. Presumably, a lot of debauchery and kissing would happen, and this tradition filtered down to the rest of Europe.”
The aforementioned is taken from a Business Insider piece by Lindsay Dodgson.
Instead of rejoicing over a year bound with expectant abundance and fatuous yearning, our ancient cousins reveled in the magnificence that they had lived to see the closing of another year. Despite what artifacts may reveal about the pleasures of ancient life, those lives were often short-lived, as maladies such as the flu could wipe out entire villages, whilst an encounter with a gladiator or being picked as the sacrificial aroma for one of many gods ensured the life expectancy stayed well below the age of 40.
In these progressive times, is it out of place to imagine a bitterly cold wind gushing through Times Square close to midnight, to find revelers wearing nothing but New Year’s hats and goggles, and working hard at keeping each other warm. Firetrucks can be converted into giant beer taps whilst the police arrest anyone offended by the mass personification of passion.
It may already be too late now, but I think we can all agree that 2018 will probably suck more than 2017 did. Knowing this, I think spirits can be lifted come next holiday season if we had a government-sponsored bacchanal in every city across the nation. It would sure help some of us stomach the office party, in lieu of actual bonuses and having to work on Christmas Day. This makes sense, after all, we still practice some of the traditions leftover from those libidinous times, like that first kiss at midnight, which usually signals the end of our celebrations. That was their cue to turn on the romance, a word which incidentally comes from their very name, Roman. With that said, let us all go forward into the upcoming drab year, knowing that if we are lucky, we can look forward to a decadent Roman-style street orgy at next years end. Happy New Years all.