Why all the parties and noise?

I don’t remember much about celebrating New Year's Eve as I grew up. If we did celebrate, I don’t have specific memories. It wasn’t until college I started having memories of celebrating New Year’s Eve, though most memories start after marriage.

 For several years after graduation, our college group got together at one home or another. We ate, laughed, caught up with each other’s lives and played games. We’d end our time with prayers of thanks for our blessings and of petition for needs expressed. It was a good way to start the New Year.

 But marriages, family and careers sent many of our friends away from Kearney to different states and to other countries. One couple, both close friends, became missionaries with Wycliffe and ended up in Indonesia for many years. Keith and I stayed in Kearney. Our friends Jeff and Gloria did as well. Our kids sometimes felt they had two sets of parents because we did so much together. That included New Year’s Eve.

We started a tradition that we brought in the New Year together. We might have a gathering at our house. They might have one at theirs. Or we were at other parties. But bringing in the New Year together became our tradition.

 Then came kids, life, exhaustion. No parties. Better just our families. Then just stay at home and call at midnight. Our kids are grown. We have grandkids we spoil when we can. Age and health are now considerations. Stay up until midnight? Forget that. Getting together with those we care about doesn’t have to take place at a certain time.

 This year Jeff and Gloria invited a small group out to eat. They, Keith and I, my sister-in-law, and, Rachel, the daughter of our missionary friends gathered at the restaurant. Rachel, with her siblings one by one, returned to the states to attend UNK. She ended up staying in Kearney, is our friend and, to us, a member of our family.

 So we ate, laughed, and talked, enjoying each other’s company early in the evening while we were awake, long before the midnight chimes rang in the new year. We then went to our house to play a new game Jeff and Gloria brought. Yawns dictated the end of the evening, long before midnight. Goodbyes and “Happy New Years” sounded as our friends left.

We didn’t force ourselves to stay up, and we still made good memories. What was going at our house at midnight? I was fast asleep. Ahh. Awoke smiling the next morning, no hangovers or regrets, ready to meet the new year.

© 2024 Carolyn R Scheidies
Hub Column 1/13/24
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