NEW YEAR’S KISS
Don’t Stress A New Year's Kiss This Year — Or Ever
The year 2020 will be memorialized in textbooks. Still, no one will remember it nostalgically.
Every person is now eagerly looking forward to refreshing the calendar more than ever before, despite the unlikelihood of getting a New Year’s kiss this year. But shouldn’t an urgent global pandemic, without a December 31st expiration date, inspire more worry than tired cliches?
It didn’t inspire gratitude on Thanksgiving (airlines reported the busiest days for US air travel since the pandemic began, despite the CDC and global health guidelines pleading with travelers to stay put). The US will likely continue to celebrate the consumerism angle of holiday spirit, breaking social distancing, binge drinking, and creating unnecessary stressors to welcome 2021.
Historians trace New Year’s Eve kissing back to three historical eras: the Romans’ celebration of Saturn, an old Scottish festival called Hogmanay, and English or Germanic folklore. Modern New Year’s Eve parties are a modern twist on all three but with the American tendency to ruin a good thing, this time by fueling it with angst and desperation. According to Entertaining from Ancient Rome to the Super Bowl: An Encyclopedia, edited by Melitta Weiss Adamson and Francine Segan, English and German folklore spread the belief that the person you first contact new year will have a direct influence on that year’s destiny.
In Colombia, people might grab a suitcase and run around the house or the block quickly — to set the stage for a year of traveling. In Denmark, revelers have a tradition of jumping off chairs for a fresh start. In Panama, it’s tradition to burn effigies (muñecos) of well-known people such as television characters and political figures to drive off evil spirits for a fresh New Year’s start.
It is customary to eat 12 grapes in Spain and Cuba – one at each stroke of the clock at midnight on New Year’s Eve. Each grape represents good luck for each month of the coming year. In bigger cities like Madrid and Barcelona, people gather in central squares to eat their grapes together and pass around bottles of Cava.
Hollywood chose the chase for a stranger’s spit as a favorite New Year’s Eve themed pastime. Pre-social distancing, the picture-perfect stranger’s pursuit as if kissing them by midnight would change everything. It’s not unlike the same magic we gave to new school supplies for children the night before a new school year. But, stylish writing utensils never abruptly changed us, and premeditated PDA won’t make January 1st feel any more fulfilling. The pandemic won’t end at the stroke of 12, so why is the impending absence of someone to kiss bothering anyone?
Emperor Penguins travel up to 70 miles during the harsh, deadly Antarctic winter during the mating season just to get laid, so could this be any worse? Humans are now ‘woke’ enough to prioritize social justice, mental wellness, and wearing a mask, but it’s meaningless without conscious reflection. You’re in a position of privilege if thinking about the New Year and how you’re going to spend it (rather than how you will eat or pay rent), so why not choose to embrace that?
Slobber all over a bottle of champagne (or whatever your poison), and indulge in the luxury of a close friend, a spa bath, a new streaming series, or all three. If you have a partner, enjoy passionate sex with them but don’t feel a need to tell your single friends about it unless you want to jinx 2021.
If the past 12 months leave us with any universal suggestion, it’s to trash expectations and practice making the best of each moment.
