New Year’s Eve is tomorrow…Where did the time go?..How do we celebrate now?

Yesterday while on a walk, we spotted this White Faced Heron.

Early this morning it dawned on me that tomorrow is New Year’s Eve.  With no big plans to celebrate, except for an event on New Year’s night (more on that later), we’ll spend the usual celebratory night at “home.” 

Perhaps, we’ll celebrate with a glass of wine on the veranda, (if the skies clear) and do as many do throughout the world, have a quiet evening at home often heading to bed before the stroke of midnight. 

Leftover from Halloween?

Its not very exciting but Penguin only has a few bars with most locals celebrating at private gatherings or, as the case for many, not celebrating at all.  Rolling into the new calendar year is not necessarily an event of significance to many throughout the world when many nationalities have their own particular calendar:

New Year’s Eve:
In both the Gregorian calendar, currently used in the United States, and the Julian calendar, which was used until 1752 in the British colonies, the last day of the year is December 31st.”

Masses of yellow daisies grow along the road.

Here is an interesting link as to when and how each country throughout the world celebrates their interpretation of the beginning of the New Year. Many  countries celebrate both their own spiritually based acknowledgement of the New Year and also the New Year those of us in Australia, the US, parts of Europe and other countries have adopted over the centuries as indicated in the above quote.

In our old lives, each year we enthusiastically celebrated New Year’s Eve with a theme based party at our home.  For days, I’d prepare a wide array of foods for the party and decorate our home befitting the theme based occasion. 

Fluffy yellow blooms.

One year we did a “tacky 70’s” theme party.  Along with our guests we dressed in bellbottoms, flower printed silky shirts and chunky heeled shoes while disco music blared in the background.  For the food, I made 70’s type of appetizers while we encouraged guests to bring their favorite 70’s type foods.

From cookie cutout baloney sandwiches to pickled eggs to homemade White Castle burgers to gruyere cheese fondue with chunks of baguettes for dipping, we had every imaginable dish as a result of a huge turnout.  For a list of 70’s type foods, please click here at this great site.

These flowers are so dark they’re almost black.  We’d seen these in new Zealand as well.

Our last such New Year’s Eve party occurred in 1999 with the fears of something awful occurring as the New Year rolled over to the year 2000.  For the first time, we had a poor turnout especially with the icy and snowy weather.  It was that year we decided we’d most likely discontinue the huge New Year’s Eve house parties. 

From there, on several occasions, we got together with friends and neighbors or stayed at home keeping the festivities low key.  This time of year in Minnesota was often bitter cold.  The idea of heading out on the icy roads with the potential of drunk drivers spinning out on the highway didn’t hold much appeal.

Wishing well planter in side yard of neighboring home.

I suppose in part for many, aging in itself is reason enough to lose interest in celebrating New Year’s Eve, whether we acknowledge it or not.  No longer is the idea of drinking copious amounts of liquor well into the night as appealing as it was in our younger days.

With few friends in this area, its unlikely we’ll do anything more than enjoy one more pleasant evening together, feeling blessed and grateful for the quality of our lives, for those we love and for each other.

Rocky beach on a cloudy day walk.

Moments ago, Tom mentioned it was two months ago today that we left Bali on a “red eye” flight arriving in Sydney spending one night in a hotel.  The following day we boarded the 33 night cruise circumventing the Australian continent.  Wow!  How the time flies! 

As for where we were one year ago please check below for our “Photo from one year ago today, December 30, 2015.”  Please have a safe and happy end of the year.

___________________________________________


Photo from one year ago today, December 30, 2015:

When we walked through the Pacific Harbour, Fiji neighborhood, one year ago, we crossed this river.  For more photos please click here.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *