5 reasons it's OK to hate New Year's Eve

Everyone hates making New Year's resolutions. Or, if they don't hate them, they at least dread making them because they always, always fail to follow through on them, regardless of how much thought -- or alcohol -- was put into making them.

Perhaps that's because resolutions, by their very nature, are set up to fail.

They are almost always made on the spur of the moment and they are almost always unrealistic goals like, "I'm going to lose 100 pounds next year!" or "I'm going to finally quit smoking cold turkey after tonight!" or perhaps the most popular, and therefore the most likely to fail, "I'm going to stop having that affair with my boss or co-worker ... after tonight, of course!"

So, let us have no more talk about New Year's resolutions. There are plenty of other reasons to hate this phony pretentious pseudo-holiday.

No. 5: Too much drinking

It's probably a safe bet to say that alcohol fuels the fire of most New Year's Eve parties.

And it's also probably fair to say that by the time midnight finally rolls around, about 99 percent of the folks who raised their glass to toast the new year and kissed their significant other -- or whoever happened to be near them at the time -- are all going to be heading home at about the same time.

So, we don't need statistics like 40 percent of traffic deaths over the New Year's Eve/New Year's Day holiday in 2009 were due to drunken driving, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, to tell us that the roads will be saturated with drunks when we're trying to get home from our parties.

Nothing like drunken drivers going over their newly made resolutions in their heads to get the new year off to a bad start.  

No. 4: Parties never live up to the hype

There are preconceived notions, built up in our collective heads over the course of time, that this year's New Year's Eve party won't be as boring and lame as last year's.

There are even a vast number of people who, each and every year without fail, truly believe that the New Year's Eve party will be the most mind blowing event since that Pink Floyd concert they went to when they couldn't figure out how to stand up after the show and had to be assisted out of the venue by security guards.

They will likely be disappointed this New Year's Eve and so will you.

The point here is that no party can ever live up to the hype that we shovel upon New Year's Eve parties like so much manure on a bean field.

No. 3: Too crowded or too lonely?

The paradox of New Year's Eve is that we don't want to be alone, but we also don't want to be crowded.

This is difficult to deal with because everyone has his or her own threshold for deciding how many people is too many people. And it can vary widely from person to person.

So, we try and find a happy medium, but that's going to be almost impossible, especially if you want to go to a bar or nightclub.

Perhaps you decide to host a party yourself, that way you can invite as many or few people as you want. However, you are also risking a severe letdown if little or no people actually show up, leaving you with a huge vat of those tiny weenies swimming in barbecue sauce, although that might not be such a bad thing.

After all, you can always wait to start that resolution-fueled diet on New Year's Day.

No. 2: Drinking at home just isn't that fun

Perhaps you're stuck at home for whatever reason: you have young children and can't find a babysitter; you're still hungover from the Christmas party; a hoard of locusts, destroying everything in their path, is bearing down on your house. Whatever.

If you are one of those people who just have to do something, anything on a holiday to show you're not a misanthropic loser one wisecrack away from mass murder, you will probably hunker down in front of the TV in your mom's basement and watch all the beautiful people party.

After a couple of whiskey-Cokes, you are no longer just living vicariously through these people, you feel like you're actually there partying with them.

Unfortunately, this only lasts for about two or three more drinks, when the alcohol slips into that part of your mind that dredges up, in vivid detail, every mistake you've ever made. Then you notice your cell phone. Ouch.

No. 1: New Year's Eve is depressing

Let's face it: New Year's Eve is just flat-out depressing.

After that ball drops in Times Square, and some moron strikes up a chorus of Auld Lang Syne, which you are obliged to sing along with because it's New Year's Eve law, you're left with a huge empty feeling that no amount of alcohol can totally wash away.

At some point during that night or the next morning, you will contemplate the arbitrary nature of time, that it's a man-made device used to control every aspect of our lives.

You will realize that New Year's Eve/Day is just another night/day. And by the time your hangover wears off, you will have forgotten the many ways this particular New Year's Eve did not live up to your expectations. So when December comes next year, the cycle of disappointment will begin anew.

But, of course, none of that will stop any of us from celebrating the new year once again. Happy New Year!!

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