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New Year’s Eve! Times Square! Champagne! Confetti! Music!
“Tonight is the night,” you tell yourself while assembling at the pre-game. Everything is in order – bar tickets? Purchased. Champagne? On the island just begging for the girls to come over. Your hair? You spent an extra five minutes on it and it’s looking flawless.
New Year’s Eve is considered one of the most exciting nights of the year, and for good reason. Almost everyone has the next day off and is wrapping up their respective holiday vacation. You can watch the College Football Playoff while surrounded by a slew of done-up biscuits who have romance lingering in their head. You can get as drunk as humanly possible and still not be the drunkest person at the bar.
But when it’s all said and done, your New Year’s Eve will still. fucking. suck.
Your expectations are too high.
Nothing screams, “I’m going to get let down” like seeing a girl with a sequined top on twirling a noisemaker above her head on December 31st.
For all intents and purposes, New Year’s Eve is a made-up holiday as much as any other made-up holiday. There’s no reason to go out other than society’s obsession with the changing of the year, justified or not. But now that every singer has their own version of “What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve,” we’ve built the holiday up in our heads. You have to do something and it has to be fantastic.
New Year’s Eve in my twenties has been a constant, “Do we have a plan yet?” discussion that lasts from December 1st until about 6 o’clock on December 31st. There’s uncertainty looming despite the fact that everyone has daydreams of midnight kisses and confetti falling perfectly on their face for the ultimate Instagram.
You think you’re going to look like James Bond. You assume everything will work out. You want to find that special someone.
Unfortunately, the night will end with one of your friend’s getting too trashed on champagne because she “forgot” to eat dinner while you can’t find your other two friends at the bar because one of them is holding the other’s hair back in a piss-covered stall.
You’re going to spend all of your money.
Despite the fact that everyone is pounding $5.99 champagne out of a bottle, New Year’s Eve has the reputation of still being a “classy” holiday. This isn’t the fucking Oscars – it’s an excuse to get bombed and start January feeling like hell only to get overwhelmed with anxiety and make a bunch of resolutions that you can’t keep.
But this false “classiness” comes with a price tag on it. Need to rent a tux? That’s $150. Girlfriend needs a new top? You’re not coming out of Nordie’s for anything less than $80 and a pile of sequins that are going to come off throughout the night. Deciding to stay in for the night and avoid going out? There’s going to be an expensive home cooked meal and bottle of wine in your future just so you can pass out before 11.
Once you actually get out and all that money is already spent, you’re going to desperately need to get home because the claustrophobia of the bar will prove too much. You’re going to pay that 10x Uber surge-pricing, though, because walking 25 blocks in the snow is way too tall of a task after you’ve been drinking for 7 hours and the girls you’re with look like newborn giraffes in their heels. You’ll inevitably screenshot your final cost and complain because you can’t fathom why an Uber should cost more on the busiest night of the year when literally everyone is going out at the exact same time.
But the worst expense of them all?
You’re paying $150 to hang out with a bunch of people you don’t know.
Every bar, club, or hotel has the exact same idea on New Year’s Eve:
“Let’s make an over-the-top poster/flyer with more words than anyone can justifiably read in under a minute. On said poster, let’s make the following offering – for anywhere between $100 to $200, you can get a watered-down open bar (that you won’t be able to get a drink at), a champagne toast at midnight (of Andre), an all-you-can-eat buffet (of shitty ‘tato skins and hours-old spinach artichoke dip), and DJ Spinz (a generic DJ who is trying to get his business off the ground between shifts at Subway).”
The best part? You get to attend this overpriced hellhole with a bunch of other people glowing with expectations, none of which you know (or want to know). Rather than coordinate something more manageable at someone’s house or apartment, you’re shelling out for a packed party that you’re not willing to admit sucks once you’re in there and have the damning realization that you fucked up.
Hey, at least you got that free .60 cent flute of Andre, though. Totally worth it.
Your hangover will last two days.
You’re no longer a 19-year-old whippersnapper who can down Everclear-filled jungle juice for the duration of a night and wake up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. The lethal combination of cheap champagne, optimistic shots, and a complete lack of sleep are going to add up to you hating your life for approximately two to three days.
Add in the fact that you’ve been destructing your body for the bender that is December and, all of the sudden, you’re having cold sweats at work even though you get January 2nd off this year because New Year’s Day (thankfully) falls on a Sunday. Blessing in disguise, right? Wrong.
Now that you have January 2nd off, you’re going to find yourself shampooing the booze back in on the 1st by way of all-you-can-drink Bloody Mary and mimosa bars that are probably super near to the overpriced party you attended the night before. You’ll sit there watching football for four hours not realizing that you aren’t curing your hangover, but just creating another one for the following day when you actually do have to work.
But don’t let my piss-poor attitude ruin your New Year’s Eve – leave that to the girl in sequins with a “HAPPY NEW YEAR” party hat perched on top of her teased and recently done hair. Her mouth might taste like cigarettes and vodka, but at least you weren’t alone this New Year’s Eve. .
Image via Shutterstock
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Will
Will (Twitter / Instagram) is the host of The Sunday Scaries Podcast.
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Jokes on you, I’m getting hammered at house parties. No night has ever ended poorly that way, no sir.
Go check my reddit post.
If this gets good enough, I don’t think we have any choice but to compile the best for a column.
Stay tuned for a poorly-recorded retrospective timeline of my night and a laughably bad call in to the Touching Base hotline
That voicemail greeting is so bad
Agreed. But that’s probably because I blacked out and don’t remember how they ended.
New Year’s Eve really is the worst holiday.
IDK I plan on staying home and having a few friends over for dinner and to get drunk. I’m making fried chicken and plan on drinking lots of champagne in my sweatpants on my couch while the ball drops.
sup?
Thank you for this. I feel better about choosing not to go to NYE at some shitty hotel with my basic roommate.
Sup?
Not sure what the proper response to a “Sup?” is. It’s my first time getting Sup?ed and I am very flattered!
Finger guns never fail
Not sure which is the worst made up holiday. NYE or Valentine’s
Yes.
Voting strongly for Valentine’s Day. At least NYE is really the end of one calendar year and beginning of another, and everyone loves a new beginning, it breaks up the monotony of life. Valentine’s Day is just a shitty corporate money grab based on manufactured romantic feelings and peer pressure.
That’s why you just watch the CFP brah, nothing about OSU v Clemson will let me down
With NYE fast approaching, I’m mostly just excited to read what happens at Caroline’s wedding.
oh fuck I commented on a comment instead of the article. We need a fucking edit button
When I saw this comment I read CFP as “Certified Financial Planner” PGP
Did you just really use the word brah?
#BringBackBrah
The amount of “Sup’s?” on this post
First step in finding that NYE kiss
Last NYE I was sick. I got all doped up on cold medicine and went to bed at like 12:15. It was the best NYE of my life.
I’m gonna try and stay in, but the first sequined top that goes walking by outside my apartment is gonna fill me with so much FOMO that I’ll end up forking over some ridiculous cover charge in no time.