My three oldest (13, 11, 10) wanted to stay up on New Year’s Eve. This is a new request so I immediately said no. They pleaded. So I compromised and told them that I’d wake them at 11:30 to come down and watch the Times Square ball drop. It was dopey of me because the three of them just went upstairs and giggled for three hours and didn’t sleep a wink until I told them they could come down.
But they came downstairs and I turned on the television. I first went to Fox where I saw Marlon Wayans be weird and keep making racial jokes which felt a bit awkward. My thirteen year old turned to me and asked me if he was racist.
I just turned the channel to ABC’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve to see former Playboy Playmate Jenny McCarthy threaten to make out with random people. My ten year old said she didn’t know her and asked what she did to get famous. Well, I wasn’t about to tell her that she got famous for getting nekkid’ and telling people to stop vaccinating their children so I just turned the channel.
To CNN I went and saw Anderson Cooper and Kathy Griffin standing there. I immediately turned that off. And thank goodness I did because she was completely obscene last night. (Check out Noel Sheppard’s story on it at Newsbusters. If you ask me she should be immediately fired.)
I clicked back to ABC just in time to see Taylor Swift sing because that’s what the girls really wanted anyway. She seems like a nice girl but I don’t know what was going on with her but she sounded…uhm…not good. (Does she always sound like that live?)
After Taylor Swift I muted the television and the girls and I just talked. They were overtired so they giggled and laughed hysterically about pretty much everything and I let them eat Funyuns.
But I won’t be watching any of these television shows in the future. So I’m looking for ideas for what to do on New Year’s Eve. Do you guys have any traditions I could steal? Any ideas?
January 1, 2013 at 11:39 pm
Even in giddy youth I was an early-to-bed sort. Thus, on the shortwave or computer I always listen to the BBC World Service as the chimes of Big Ben chime in the New Year — midnight GMT but 6:00 P.M. God's Own Texas Time.
As for 2013, well, to rephrase MacDuff in MACBETH, may our new robes sit easier than our old.
January 2, 2013 at 2:04 am
Hubby and I don't do much these days, just watch a movie until midnight. Last night we toasted with Pabst Blue Ribbon beer, which he'd been craving for some time for some unknown reason. Cheaper than the cheapest cheap champagne and less likely to leave us hung over 🙂
The New Year's tradition I REALLY Miss is Conan O'Brien's Central Time Zone Countdown (from his "Late Night" years in the 90s and early 2000s) with dancing ears of corn, dancing Abe Lincoln, live cows, the giant heads of Chicago celebrities Oprah Winfrey and Jim Belushi kissing at the stroke of midnight CST … that was classic entertainment compared to what's on the tube now, I guess.
Elaine
January 2, 2013 at 2:19 am
Speaking of quirky alternatives to the Times Square ball drop, Wikipedia has an entire article devoted to "Objects Dropped on New Year's Eve", which includes:
— The "Little Apple" ball drop in Manhattan, Kansas;
— The giant peach drop in Atlanta;
— Cherry drop in Traverse City, Michigan;
— Giant guitar drop in Memphis and (formerly) Nashville;
— The Big Cheese Drop in Plymouth, Wisconsin;
— A 600-pound Moon Pie in Mobile, Alabama;
— A giant wrench in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania;
and my favorite,
— A giant pickle in Mount Olive, N. C.
Elaine
January 2, 2013 at 3:40 am
I make fancy appetizers and desserts (and by "make" I mean "heat up what i got at Trader Joes") and we watch movies or play games. There was a Honeymooners marathon on one of the NYC stations so we watched a lot of that. The kids loved it! Then about 5 minutes till midnight we switched to ABC for the ball drop. I got out the wine glasses for the kids' sparkling juice and our bubbly. Glasses clinked, kisses exchanged. Everyone was in bed by 12:30. My big three all made it. Ages 12, 9, &6.
January 2, 2013 at 4:22 am
Not a tradition (yet) but we introduced my aunt to Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood, the single finest dramatization of bioethics the world has ever seen.
Important, don't watch the first series (just called Fullmetal Alchemist) by mistake, the head writer on that version is a 9/11 Truther and the idiot behind the notoriously anti-Semitic "Angel Cop" back in the 90s.
January 2, 2013 at 4:24 am
The NYE shows are always inappropriate and stupid. We watched movies and turned on the TV for the last five minutes — including last night, when our youngest (16) was here with a friend. I flipped through the stations when my husband and son drove the friend home and MAN was there stupid, offensive stuff in just the two or three minutes I gave each show!
As to Taylor Swift: I have only seen her on one live show where she sang remotely well. Either she is bad on live tv or she is always bad and they fix her voice for records; I used to think it was the latter but considering how many shows she sells out every week I guess maybe not.
January 2, 2013 at 4:44 am
We ring in the new year at noon on New Year's Eve. Food, fun, poppers, and sparklers. It's great fun. Then, the kids go to bed on time. We all are well rested for mass the next morning.
January 2, 2013 at 2:24 pm
We celebrate every New Year's with steak and lobster –and dessert –everyone gets something they love. We toast the new year and ask about what everyone loved in the past. We write down our new year's resolutions and save them to check on for the next year –they usually get lost and forgotten and it's fun. My husband buys poppers. We use the cell phone to signal the minute before New year's. We have everyone open the front door and then run to the back to open it and throw our fireworks to scare out the old year with the noise. Until then, it's card games and board games and movies of their choice. It's fun. (Babies and toddlers do go to sleep, but only after warm baths and stories and prayers).
January 2, 2013 at 5:44 pm
My kids and I rang in the New Year by reading Calvin and Hobbes.
January 2, 2013 at 10:44 pm
My tradition is to go to Pro Sanctity's celebration: 10pm Rosary, 11pm Holy Hour, Midnight Mass, 1am(or so) breakfast. One year we had 5 priests celebrating.
January 3, 2013 at 9:02 am
Having fixated on recent years, I forgot that when the kids were home the tradition from the time they were in elementary school until they all finished school (after which they wanted to party with their friends) was to have a fondue on New Year's Eve.
Cooking and eating would keep us busy until almost midnight. As we ate we watched CBC specials until 10 and then we'd watch the local (well, Atlantic Canada) celebration from Halifax, Nova Scotia. Lots of music and no questionable content. They do two countdowns, 30 minutes apart: one at Midnight Newfoundland time and one at Midnight Atlantic time. It's still the go-to countdown for those of us in this region since many of us have already retired to our beds by the time the ball drops in Time Square at 1 a.m. our time.