Happy New Year Example readers. Wait, was it? All too often, New Year’s is regrettably, and unavoidably, shit. The happy glow of Christmas has already faded, and the prospect of three long months before normal daylight resumes again looms. New Year’s Eve is the last chance to wave the old year out in style, and bring in the next 12 months with as much merriment as you can muster. Style and merriment, however, cannot always be guaranteed. As I myself fall under the ‘New-Year-Hater’ category, I’ll do my best to explain why.

Deciding to go out can be an error from forced start to long-overdue finish. First there is the problem of people. Masses and masses of people. Some of these may be throwing up, particularly in proximity to you. Even those with the most resilient of ‘more-the-merrier’ attitudes will find their cheer being stretched to its limit after an hour wait in the queue to the club, only to find the crowds at the bar to be relentlessly 5-people deep. Not that you’ll have much money left to spend on drinks after you paid double what you normally would to get into your regular. Change your mind? Tough. If it’s not too late and the damage hasn’t already been done, it will have been by the time you manage to get your jacket back from the cloakroom – an item essential in combating December’s annoying tendency to be 2 degrees. And if you made it this far, try hailing a free cab for one across town on time and a half fare... with that £4 left in your pocket. Nope, – you’re in it for the long haul.

If you made the bold and seemingly cunning move to stay in on New Year’s, do not reward yourself too soon. You may have avoided being man-handled out of the way of the taxi queue by an unsteady, kebab-wielding heffer for one night, but instead, you can enjoy spending the next 5+ hours being painfully aware of the fact that you are not, indeed, out. When did it come to this? When did you get so old? So boring? So people-hatingly cynical? If you hadn’t plagued yourself with these questions at the time, your non-participation would be swiftly brought to the attention of all fun-loving party-goers on the third of January, for whom ‘back to work/uni’ was actually just a day to investigate your snub of all frivolous festivities on their Fun Inquisition.

Now, whether in or out, the most crucial and mandatory part of the New Year’s Eve celebration is that you should end the night completely intoxicated. Where possible, it is advisable to establish a drunken plateau before midnight. This is useful in many ways. First, it will help ease the awkwardness of the obligatory cross-armed Auld Lang Syne little jig that overcomes us all in the heat of the midnight moment. Indeed, you might even feel inspired to have a bash at the words – effort is rewarded here over accuracy. Secondly, it will also allow you to realise just how GREAT the people are who you have had the pleasure of bringing the New Year in with; loose acquaintances and strangers alike. Maybe 2012 will be the year for an awesome new set of FRIENDS after all? Finally, and most importantly, an abundance of alcohol is vital in blurring what will probably be the first crushing realisation of the year for single folk everywhere: that you have spent the end of last year alone, that you are beginning the new year with no significant leads, and that within the next 3 seconds, you need to find someone – ideally someone not entirely offensive – to snog. Give me strength.

If you stuck to the rules of the New Year’s Eve game, and successfully ended the most unforgettable night of the year in an elated and confused stupor, you will have been able to greet the New Year in its proper way the next morning: Clutching the sides of your bed, sweating profusely, and overcome by frequent waves – nay – tsunamis of nausea. Promptly forgetting the most unforgettable night of last year, of course.

So congratulations on making it to 2012. You might have made some resolutions on how you’d like this year to turn out. These might even be optimistically listed on some social media page.  Sorry to play Judas here girls, but we are largely responsible for this cringe-worthy crime. “2012 is going to be my year!” “Big things coming my way in 2012!” “Can’t wait to lose 2 stone/ travel the world/ land my dream job this year! 2012! Woop!”. Baby-steps, eh? It is important to remind those deluded and dear to us, that midnight on the 31^st December of any year is not magical. It is not the witching hour. All those things that didn’t happen in 2011 aren’t suddenly going to come true in 2012 because you published your aims on Facebook and five people ‘liked’ it. Big changes in your life take effort, so if you have it in you, go for it. You will have truly achieved something, and people will be impressed, even inspired, by your determination. 

Then again, isn’t the world supposed to be ending this year? Oopsies. Bit awkward. HAPPY 2012!