What is New Year's Eve anyway? Isn't it just another day with 24 hours, with day and night, a shower, breakfast, lunch, and dinner?

For the busy and motivated it's just another day, another 24 hour chance to prove ourselves, get ahead and compete with the challenges and responsibilities (respons-hillbilly-tees? Ha:) to accomplish that day. Is it bad that some of us have desecrated this date as "just another day" in our calendar?

Bogged down by my own plans, thoughts, and routines I chose to give away the mystique in my mind, and put down the milestone as "just another day". I found a ready ally in my stepdad, who asserts the misfortune of landing a birthday on the same day. He hates the momentousness of the occasion mingling with a day that should have been all his own. We chuckle, basking cynically to "let's get this dang day over sooner the better", and "bah-humbug!".

Resolutely embarked on a proper "evening in" with the boyfriend; such a sweet and obliging ham, going along lovingly with the plan, accommodatingly. It was curmudgeonly bliss! Not only was I going to 'couch-potato' with Roku, my face in a food bowl, but with my beloved boy too! Joy.

I excused my unfeeling attitude with expressions like, "it's just another day", "the sun will still rise", "there's no real meaning to it", and "the equinox- now THERE'S something to commemorate!".

Then, as midnight crept closer, my heart went soft. I remembered the sheer thrills of planned new years past, with friends at bars or family at festive dinners... And I remembered: there IS a rite of passage here, an annual marker. It's easy to dismiss, and hard to ignore. For it signifies a concrete turn, a step in time, a point of no return. Sure, we have those every day; but thanks to the Gregorian calendar (GEEE THANKS KING GREGORY, no wait POPE Gregory; oh heck one of those...). Yeah, thanks to THEM and their friends, we mark this significant passage once every circle around the Sun. In December after the equinox, the birth of Baby Jesus, and Santa Claus' visit.

And it IS a significant one, I admit it. It means all kinds of things to our lives, and how we run them. But most of all, I realized it adds the most meaning to our relationships with the people around us, our social circles, our communities. It marks the passage of time and achievement for them too, and this matters because of how it affects us. It means something different to everyone.

So go ahead, and "ring in" the new year sleeping; do it! I champion and support it. I'm an Olympic sleeper, there's nothing I love more AND I MEAN nothing. Sleeping rocks, it rules my land of lazy. (Waking up is cool too though, but at my own speed). Just make sure you hit the pillow with a special feeling of cheer and expectation; for new year's eve dreams are going to be special, and in the morning you'll wake oddly renewed and excited for this clean new start of possibilities, efforts, ideas, and purpose. Happy New Year!