It's that time of the end of the year again

The end of the year is nigh. Unlike a day before apocalypse, however, most people are looking forward to this notional cessation tonight without running the risk of being thought of as being part of some cult. For one, it's been a tough last two years with a virus gatecrashing the 2021 New Year's Eve non-party. For another, how better to prepare for a possible return of the same virus in a different set of clothes than to spend this New Year's Eve as if it's the last one - at least for a while.

But there are the odd folks - what is normalcy, anyway? - who find no reason to join the festive mood. One lot may have 'ideological' reasons to find anything 'Western' that has been universalised - whether the prevalent Julian calendar or the defunct Gregorian one - to be worth a scoff, rather than a bash. Another lot are more philosophically inclined, maintaining the stoic position of treating December 31, 2022, segueing into January 1, 2023, as nothing but a false door, with the end of one Earthly chakkar around the Sun cycle and the start of another amounting to nothing but 'another day'. But for the half-hearted, there's always one more halfway choice. As the caption of an old New Yorker cartoon depicting a couple in their living room during a December 31 evening has it, 'I don't care about the New Year, but I really love the excitement around it.' That should be good enough for potential New Year deniers and party poopers tonight.