To dislike New Year’s Eve?

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

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.

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.

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

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

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 )

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.

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.

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 hated New Year's Eve but not because of raucous celebrations and alcohol-fuelled partying. I have always got rather depressed looking back at a year when I felt that I still had not achieved my potential, that I hadn't lived up to my own standards, that I wasn't doing things right, that I was a failure in many ways, etc. etc. I would start out at a party of some sort and then leave before midnight, sit on the bottom stair and sob into my long-suffering dog's furry coat. The lovely dog is long gone and I am less hard on myself these days. I am still not a fan of New Year's Eve, but for some years I have thrown a big lunch party, inviting all those people I love, on New Year's Day to reaffirm our connections. It works.

I hate it,

I neither like nor dislike it. It's just another day on which I go to bed when I'm tired.

I don't know any rowdy drunk people either mabon1. At least, if they ever are like that it's not in my company. I don't do noise, which is why I like living a little off the beaten track.

I think life is generally noisier now than it used to be.

I don’t like NYE either.

I now allocate myself to work the night shift and watch new life enter the world.
We all take food and a bottle of Shloer in and it’s lovely!

Happy birthday to you Sulis

It is my birthday on New Year's Eve and I have to have a party at lunchtime as everyone is going to a new year party in the evening.

We live in a small village in Devon where there used to be two pubs; one great, even on New Years Eve, the other rum by a businessman that he no soul. Unfortunately the former was owned by a pyromaniac who reverted to his usual behaviour a few years ago...we now stay in, drink what we like in whatever quantity and go to our beds to read our books when we get bored! We haven't seen the new year in for about 8 years now! Best thing about living with your best friends

oldbatty

New year's eve is when you look back on the mistakes of the last twelve months and wonder if you can stop yourself repeating them in the next twelve months......

Always loathed NYE , since a teenager, ( and believe me, that’s a LONG time ago) I’ve made sure I’m safe asleep in one year, to wake up in the next!

I think that NYE is vastly overrated. We much prefer staying in and having a normal evening in front of the telly. Sometimes we stay up until midnight, sometimes we don’t. It’s just another night, after all.
I remember when I was footloose and fancy free, I went out with my friend to a pub, kissed everyone there and came home with a chair we didn’t start out with!!

For the last 11 years DD has worked on Christmas eve, until midnight, NYE and NYD. The price of getting Christmas day off.

This year she has changed her whole career and now works 9 - 5, in a job where they closed the office at mid-day today and will not open again until 2 January, so this year we will all definitely be seeing the New Year in, at home, with a glass of bubbly and some party food. Just the seven of us, as DS and family will be staying.

We may also go in to the garden to see the fireworks, if there are any, and probably end up with a game of outdoor hide and seek known as 'finding Daddy in the dark'.

I used to work nights and would usually offer to work New Year’s Eve. It’s always an anti climax. And working put some brownie points in Bank for me with colleagues!

The past few years we have been invited to another couples house with their four friends, all very nice but its so boring they invite everyone at 4pm,yes 4pm we have a nice meal about 6pm then sit around exchanging news or the occasional joke until Midnight welcome the New Year then sit around again, I have made excuses each year about 1 am to go home, this year I said before we were invited that we wouldnt be coming this year, I just couldnt cope, I would rather see the New Year in on TV.We dont live in the UK but I love the midnight tv from London.New Years Eve here is definately dead if you dont go out, but then you need to book somewhere a year ahead.I sound grumpy but I dont see what there is in a Party with sitting around for hours listening to the same jokes year in year out.Home at New Year for us 2018

I like New Years Eve too . I struggle with Christmas a bit , I have had some quite sad Christmas’s, and I am a nurse in a substance misuse service so I know some of our service users are on the streets and although I know they can access the provisions that are available too them over Christmas , I can’t help but think of these very real people who probably never imagined they would be in the position they find themselves in now and that makes me sad ?
Whereas New Year I feel has an optimism about it and an air of possibility.
Maybe the diet will be the one I stick too , maybe I will start to enjoy exercise this year , maybe this is the year I will get organised, my son will find a job, we will win the lottery, whatever it is , this may just be the year !!
As the year progresses this optimism does fade ? , but at New Year , it’s all possible ?.

In my youth I enjoyed some great NYEs - wearing the tartan and dancing and singing with Scottish friends and neighbours, celebrating in central London and getting overly familiar (and very wet) with the fountains in Trafalgar Square, and then having to walk 12 miles home as there were no trains or buses after midnight -happy days.

But now I struggle to stay awake till midnight, when I know our DSs will ring with greetings. The TV is usually boring and I really HATE all the 'reviews' of the previous year and predictions for the new one. I guess. I'm a grumpy too about NYE.