Booze versus Snooze

If there are any impressionable adults in the room, you might want to hide this from them.

We’re about to discuss a secret of the season that not everyone can handle.

All set? Here goes.

New Year’s Eve revelry is a myth.

All right, just to be clear, there certainly are people who celebrate by slurping spirits and going for wild-and-crazy. Writer Calvin Trillin once characterized this population subset as the “party-as-a-verb crowd.”

These folks are still with us. God bless them, one and all. Don’t forget to call them a cab.

But the hackneyed notion that full-tilt New Year’s Eve whooping is a universal experience is, well, ridiculous – especially in staid, sensible Spokane.

This is a place that understands the attraction of staying home. This is the city that sleeps.

This is the great place to raise a family, not hell.

The Lilac City’s New Year’s Eve slogan could be “Near the fridge and TV, near perfect.”

OK, nobody is saying First Night doesn’t have a lot to offer. And, of course, there are parties and open-late establishments to be found.

Still, it’s time to put New Year’s Eve’s bad boy reputation to bed.

Just ask around.

“I don’t know anyone who still goes out to party down,” said Holly Bickford, a Spokane Valley homemaker. “… Somewhere there are people dressed to the nines, drinking champagne and dancing the night away, but it’s not around here.”

Mike Boseth, 54, a medical technologist at Bonner General Hospital in Sandpoint, agreed. “If personal experience is any indicator, wild New Year’s Eve parties are a myth,” he said. “The most I do is watch the ball drop at Times Square.”

Of course, there are those who contend that missing out on festive bacchanals isn’t really missing out on much.

Others view ringing in the new year as possibly having something to do with taunting our own mortality.

Marina Overen, 43, a single and self-employed Cheney resident, said classic New Year’s Eve revelry reminds her of that old Peggy Lee song, “Is That All There Is?”

North Sider Shelley Davis is 50 and works in a medical office. She said she used to be “quite the party girl” once upon a time. These days, she is more likely to be sound asleep when the year flips over.

Spokane artist Ken Yuhasz has a theory. He thinks he used up most of his “New Year’s Eve energy” when he was considerably younger. Now, for him, the occasion is pretty tame. Still, he’s not sure the fabled party night ever really lived up to its lampshade billing.

Scheduling mirth and merriment doesn’t always work, after all. Moreover, many of us simply grow up. Eventually.

Several dozen interviewees contacted by e-mail said similar things.

Spokane college student Lydia Kinne turned 20 recently. What does she think of when asked about celebrating the end of the year? “Playing a few table games and watching a few movies,” she said.

Woo-hoo.

Of course, some who regularly enjoy mood-altering substances have been known to disdain New Year’s Eve’s forced-march feel. It was always considered “amateur night” by the hard-core partiers Washington State University professor John Fellman hung out with back in another geologic era.

It probably ought to be noted, though, that getting wasted and shaking your groove thing at midnight is not the only way New Year’s Eve can be made special.

Jay Griffiths, a 47-year-old sales manager at a Spokane auto dealership, said he and his wife cherish their tradition of getting together with another couple for a quiet celebration. “We have a few drinks, eat great food, laugh and generally have a fine, albeit subdued, time.”

Suzanne Vreeland, a 56-year-old retiree in Moscow, Idaho, told a similar story. She and her husband spend the occasion with a couple who celebrate their wedding anniversary on New Year’s Eve.

Smells like grownups’ spirit.

Some people set off fireworks. Others haul out noisemakers or simply open the back door and bang on pots and pans. A few misguided souls even try to sing “Auld Lang Syne.”

Others get busy in private.

One 73-year-old respondent said that last year she and her husband of 51 years didn’t just settle for a midnight kiss, if you catch my drift.

The holiday-before-the- holiday can also mark a beginning.

Autumn Wells, a reporter and anchor at KXLY-TV, is getting married to her fiancé, Isaac, this New Year’s Eve. “We view New Year’s Eve as a celebration of the trials and treasures one experiences over the course of the year,” she said.

She also likes that this long-weekend Monday will be convenient for friends and family attending the ceremony.

A few movies over the years (“When Harry Met Sally,” “The Apartment,” et cetera) have presented Dec. 31 as being on a par with Valentine’s Day when it comes to the pressure-is-on romance sweepstakes.

But more than a few divorced couples might attest that it’s probably best to keep your feet on the ground about this sort of thing, no matter what the calendar says.

Sometimes a kiss is just a kiss.

Sure, there will be people who will toss back too much champagne Monday night and see in 2008 through bleary eyes.

That, however, is just one choice.

“We all need to celebrate life,” said Jeff Neuberger, an Air Force chaplain. “How we celebrate reveals who we are.”

Maybe we all could drink to that.