A non-holiday?

New Years has never been a big deal for me. That sentiment was cemented last night when my kids wanted to stay up until midnight to "celebrate" New Years. I told them that people just count down the final minute before midnight, then kiss and say, "Happy New Year!"

They didn't believe me. They figured there had to be more to it than that.

So, they counted the seconds to midnight and watched the people on television kiss and yell into the camera that familiar phrase.

Boring! Then they went to bed. Nowhere near as exciting as Christmas or Halloween, that's for sure! The only good thing about it all was that they got to stay up until midnight.

So is New Years strictly an adult holiday? If you're a drinker, then you probably like celebrating it. But if you don't drink, it's not that much fun. Yeah, you get together with friends, but how is it different from getting together with friends any other night of the year? Of course on New Years Eve, you're more likely to share the road with a preponderance of drunks. Oooh, fun!

What about all the people at Times Square who stood in the freezing temperatures for hours? For what? The chance to kiss on television? A million people show up, so the odds that you will be one of the twenty couples they film kissing at midnight are pretty slim. Yet the ones interviewed claim it's "so worth it" to be there at midnight.

Hmmm. Right.

Freezing outside for hours just to say, "Happy New Year," is not my cup of tea. Not to mention using port-a-potties and pushing through a million-strong crowd to use them. (Yuck!) The supposed payoff for these people is to be able to claim that they were in Times Square when the ball dropped. Whoop-dee-doo! How about the folks who did the same thing to ring in 2008? Or 1986? Does it really matter?

I guess I'm too cynical for my own good.

"Happy New Year!"