New Year's Eve 2018 from the balcony of our Skyline View Condo in the Rio Piedras Barrio of San Juan, Puerto Rico.
The departure of the old year (and the arrival of a new one) is always a bittersweet affair. Every year we mourn losses and celebrate new arrivals; cheer victories and shoulder defeats. But for one night every year, each December 31-- we get to enter a twilight nether region between a fading past and an unfolding future.
When I was younger, I had a period where I hated New Year's Eve. Its focus on reflection and rebirth, recrimination and resolution-- all the while wrapped in a glitzy package of boozy hedonism, seemed mocking at best and psychotic at worst. The perfect opportunity to take stock in everything that did not go right for 365 straight days and drown them all in a pool of gin and regret (to steal and paraphrase a line from Leslie Jordon).
Eventually I got over all that. Living in San Juan in the early 90's, and experiencing the absolute joy of this holiday (unvarnished) was a big help. New Year's in Puerto Rico was very different from the lush and maudlin New Year's of my youth. Here it was boozy (but never drunken, since being drunk in Puerto Rico is seen as being very unseemly and decidedly un-gentlemanly), and very family oriented. Going to a bar or nightclub for midnight in Puerto Rico is an exercise in minimalism, since most Puertoricans are at home with their families. At 2 AM (or 3, or 4, or 5) they will stream in, but when the big moment arrives they will be at home sipping coquito and discharging a volley of fireworks and firearms (yes-- bullets and ALL) that turn the skies churning gray and acrid with smoke.
Bullets not withstanding, I like New Year's Eve in Puerto Rico. For Puertoricans, New Year's is the half-way mark of Christmas-- an adult holiday wedged between two decidedly more youthful festivals, and the long, languishing slovenliness of New Year's Day is punctuated by leisure and occasional visits from family and friends, and not a hungover bacchanal of spray cheese and football games.
However you choose to celebrate this nether region between a fading past and an unfolding future, I hope you choose to reflect on the joy of living each new year, decade, or century brings. Each year is a milestone (or millstone) of our own creation and each new year a fresh unpainted canvass ready for our own palate of color, tone and style. Make the most of it and I hope to see you again, refreshed and optimistic in our new decade!!!
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