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This isn't a news article, though, so why am I bothering to say it?
Because, unlike Christmas Day, Easter Sunday, Valentine's Day, Halloween, birthdays, Mother's Day and even Remembrance Day, this date gives us the opportunity to look forwards as well as back. We can look at the next year, think about what we want to do with our lives, and plan ahead. Christmas sees us open presents and contemplate sales, Remembrance Day has us looking at heroic sacrifices of the past and birthdays open up the rest of our lives before us. New Year's Day is different.
Being able to take a step back from your life is a great privilege, even if we tend to fail at most of our resolutions. When else is there an institutionalised opportunity to say that you're going to change yourself? It's also a time that you can do what you want. Christmas is a time when people around the world gather with their families, but New Year's Eve is a time when you can choose who you want to be with and count down to the next year with good friends. It's also the time that you're more likely to be on holiday over Christmas, and is the only holiday in the year (that I know of) for which it's traditional to stay up really late, even as children.
Sure, we all hate Auld Lang Syne and I, at least, hate being woken up at 7am by the backlog of “Happy New Year” text messages, but you're free to do what you like. Last year I was in Athens. The year before, I proposed to my now-wife at 2am. The year before that, I spent New Year with my parents. And every year, people have nodded politely and without interest after asking me what I did.
Ultimately, the freedom that New Year's Eve and New Year's Day offers – freedom to celebrate the date however you want, and freedom to change your life for the better – is only miserable if you choose to make it so. Feel free to spend it with people you hate, stuck in a dingy club with no way of getting home, making new year's resolutions that don't last five minutes – but I'll be trying to get my life in order, spending a night with some of my best friends and being told by society that this is the perfect opportunity to kiss the woman I love.
Plus there's still one more week to play Christmas music.
Disagree with Jason? Check out Jess' view of New Year's Eve here
Also, fireworks. But that goes without saying!
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