To dislike New Year’s Eve?

I’m glad those days of sobbing into your sweet dog have gone Absent - if only for the dog’s sake. It is true that ‘if all else fails then hug the dog’.

I have always enjoyed Christmas, and with my birthday coming on the day after Boxing day both my wife and I have always felt that was sufficient celebrating. Therefore New Year had been a stay at home just the two of us occasion over the last decade or so.

However last year friends of ours who like ourselves normally spent new year quietly suggested we all go to a small hotel on Exmoor that had been recommended to them, so we booked, and it was wonderful. It was a very old ten bedroomed hotel with roaring fireplaces, well off the beaten track with excellent walking and food.

New years eve they served a great menu, and then in the lounge, we watched the Rod Stewart new years eve concert from Sterling Castle with other guests. We then sat chatting and getting slowly sloshed until the early hours with our friends and those other guests.

New years day we had a walk to a local village for a "soft drink lunch" and then again a lovely evening meal back at the hotel, followed by watching the Andre Rieu Maastricht summer concert in the lounge and another good chat and a laugh.

All the above was the first time in many years that we had truly celebrated New Year, and we have all booked again for this year. So, i think (as we found out) it is a case perhaps of seeking out what it is that will suit you amongst all that is on offer over the holiday period.

We are really looking forward to Chrismas and new year now.

My parents were Aberdonians, so from when I was small, we always celebrated Hogmanay. We had family friends who came to see the New Year in and I was allowed a small glass of cream sherry.

Never made anything of it really especially once the DDs were of an age to need taking to or collecting from their own parties!
So we used to host an Open House on New Years Day and everybody we knew would drop for Bucks Fizz and canapés.
When Paw was working in Bournemouth he would be on call over New Year in exchange for being able to come home over Christmas and we would have a nice dinner, toast the new year in the grounds of Christchurch Priory and go to the BSO’s New Years Day Gala Viennese concert.
So actually having had a solitary and contemplative (and miserable) C Eve, I am dreading it.
(PS Grandad the Scottish castle is Stirling )

The only time I stayed up for New Year was for the millennium, such an anti-climax

Ive never been awake at new year since dd left home. I cant stand parties and hate the silly giggling and bad behaviour of people old enough to know better. So bed and book for me

We’ve done different things over the years. Apart from when we were young and didn’t know any better, we’ve never got drunk or done anything silly.
I don’t like being home alone on New Year’s Eve. The passing of the old year seems sad and reminds me of a line from the hymn we always sang at school at the end of term ‘time that’s lost may all retrieve’ - things I meant to do but didn’t, friends I meant to catch up with but didn’t find the time, and sometimes the loss of friends or family members.
So I prefer to do something - when the children were little we would spend NYE with friends and stay over at their house or ours. Then later there would be get-togethers with neighbours and all the children would be allowed to come too.

The last few years it’s been going to the dancing club we belong to so it’s good company with friends and doing something we enjoy.

The numbering of the years is an arbitrary notion so going from the 31st Dec to the 1st Jan is really just one day to the next. The winter solstice is more significant. After the shortest day, the year really has turned but sun worship was discouraged when Christianity arrived.

My family never made much of New Year's Eve. My Dad would be pushed outside at one minute to midnight. He collected a piece of coal and came back in when midnight struck. Everyone got a kiss and we all went to bed. My parents hardly drank alcohol. My most vivid memories, as a child, were of lying in bed with my sister at my grandparents' house in Liverpool, listening to the tugboats sounding their hooters at midnight down on the River Mersey.

When I married a man from the North East, he couldn't understand my lack of interest in the manic celebrations that used to go on here. 'First footing' went on for hours after midnight back then and it was considered bad luck to be your own 'first foot' over the thresh. Women slaved to produce a table full of buffet foods for all the callers and a lot of beer and whisky was bought and consumed. There are still parties at the local pubs and hotels but I don't think there's quite as much first footing. Not round here anyway. After the parties on New Year's Eve, people go out next day and do it all again, either at the local or at someone's house.

On my own at Hogmanay since 1985 I invented my own ceremony involving lighting candles and bringing them into my dear house.