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Archive: hogmanay

Christmas vs. New Year

31 December 2008 22:17

Categories: Entertainment, Food and drink, General, Media, Nostalgia, Personal, Scotland, Television

At work, we are given a choice between working on Boxing Day or working on the 2 January. I have always opted to take 2 January off, even though I tend not to drink much on Hogmanay — certainly not enough for me still to be hungover two days later. Sure enough, this year I have no plans to see in the new year with a bang.

(Even if I did, I probably wouldn’t be able to attend, as I’ve been hit by some winter disease that has taken it right out of me. Yesterday I was sent home from work, and when I got home I went straight to bed and accidentally fell asleep. This was at around 16:30. I stayed asleep more or less right through until 08:30 this morning. I feel better today, but still in no form to celebrate properly.)

Nonetheless, it feels right to work on Boxing Day rather than 2 January, even though I couldn’t articulate a reason why. I don’t know if this is some kind of subconscious Scottish patriotism, the day being recognised as a holiday in few other countries. Maybe it’s just because it’s later, and I want to save it up to enjoy (time discounting wouldn’t be much of a factor, as I filled in the form months ago). Or maybe it just indicates a preference for New Year as a holiday over Christmas.

It has to be said, Hogmanay is pretty naff. To be frank, we could do without the twee BBC Scotland fiddle-me-dee extravaganza. Only an Excuse? ceased to be funny about a decade ago, and lost all relevance to me as I lost interest in football. The other side is not much better, as if the BBC thought that making us suffer most Fridays of the year with Jools Holland on the box wasn’t enough.

But there is still something special about Hogmanay. I think it stems from my memories of it as a child. It was more or less the only day of the year when I was allowed to stay up late. For a nightowl like me, it was amazing. And sometimes I even got an extra special tipple with which to see in the new year: Irn Bru.

Mind you, it’s not as if childhood memories of Christmas are exactly dire. But I think it is easier to fall out of love with Christmas as you become an adult. Gleefully receiving presents makes way for having to give presents. Your eyes are opened to the stress everyone puts themselves under. People get hung up on creating the perfect Christmas, which I would have said rather ruins the mood, which is supposed to be cheerful.

Some people are forced to spend Christmas with family members that they don’t like, and possibly don’t even see for the rest of the year. For some, Christmas Day is a day of dreary, dreaded routine.

Perhaps most importantly, Christmas brings with it a whole suite of naffness. Tacky tinsel, Christmas cards with garish depictions of Santa Claus, and a list of terrible Christmas songs as long as your arm.

Despite the twee TV, our attitude towards New Year is much simpler. You go out with your pals, get blootered and take two days to recover. And perhaps most importantly, there are no bad Paul McCartney songs about New Year. Awesome.

So happy new year everyone! Thanks for sticking with the blog through the dry patches. I might make it my new year’s resolution to update more often. Then again, that was my resolution last year as well…

2 comments

5th bloggiversary (oh, and Happy New Year)

1 January 2008 00:01

Categories: Admin, Blogging, General, Internet, Personal, Technology, University

I usually forget the anniversary of this blog. I think this is for a variety of reasons.

Firstly, at this time of year we usually have other festivities on our minds. Also this blog has two major anniversaries in my mind. Moving to doctorvee.co.uk was a watershed, and I am sometimes reluctant to even acknowledge what I did before. Yet my first blog post, back in the days when I used Blogger, was posted five years ago, on the 30th of December 2002. What a thought.

Less than two years later I upped sticks, and the first post on this WordPress blog came on the 8th of December 2004. Crazy stuff.

Even before I started posting on Blogger, I had a web presence (some rubbishy Geocities pages). The move to the blog was gradual, which is probably another reason why I often forget the bloggiversary. It’s amazing to see how the blog has evolved over the years from several pithy posts a day a few years ago to today’s much longer and more infrequent posts.

Happy New Year

By the time you read this the clock will have struck midnight and you might well be nursing a bad hangover. So Happy New Year to you. Have some coal.

A lump of coal for your new year

I have a strange relationship with Hogmanay. I often think I prefer it to Christmas, although when it comes it is often a damp squib.

I think I grew up with different expectations to most people of what the new year was supposed to be like. I saw it as a time for family moreso than Christmas. You know, when I was younger Christmas was about the Sega MegaDrive and Hogmanay was when I got to stay up late with the family and drink some Irn Bru.

A few years ago I discovered that this attitude made me a heretic and that Hogmanay is for getting rat arsed with your friends. Friends I can live with. I like friends.

But the drink? I like a drink, but I never see the point in getting totally rat arsed, even at new year. A bad hangover isn’t any better just because it happens to fall on the 1st of January. In fact, it might be worse to have a hangover on this day because I want to enjoy the big dinner my parents will be cooking!

I was working today which meant that I didn’t get any real input into the plans my friends were hatching. Needless to say — as I am sitting here writing this post with T minus 45 minutes until the bells — I baulked at the plans, which sound to me like an utter recipe for disaster. I am fragile and I like to sleep. I can make do without a bed, but preferably somewhere with people that I actually know, and failing that somewhere in the town where I actually live.

So I am now having a quiet night in, which is quite odd, but I’ve been getting stuff done which is good. Christmas Day itself was excellent, but the rest of the holidays have been such a massive disappointment — mostly because I have so much studying to do.

I have essays and a dissertation to write. They have been hanging over me the whole time and it’s been quite a bleak month — and it will be a bleak couple of months ahead as the big deadline looms. But I have allowed myself to take the 31st and the 1st off, which at least gets rid of the guilt I feel when I inevitably begin procrastinating.

Usually I don’t do new year’s resolutions. By my reckoning, if you were really that bothered about whatever vice you’re worried about, you would try to stop it regardless of whether it was the new year or not. That’s why new year’s resolutions are bound to fail.

Nevertheless, over the Christmas holiday I have become even more worried than normal about my sleeping patterns. It’s quite bad when you are routinely spending 13, 14 hours in bed — the first few trying to get to sleep, then around ten hours actually being asleep, dead to the world. At this time of the year, I miss entire days.

It’s okay to be like this when you are a student bum like me, but given that I am in my final year at university I won’t be able to get away with it for much longer. So now is the time to sort it out and to dedicate some real energy to finding a proper solution to my sleep problems.

I will also try to publish one blog post per day, although I have been trying to do that anyway!

1 comment

Happy New Year

31 December 2006 21:25

Categories: Admin, Blogging, General, Internet, Personal, Scotland, Technology

Just to wish you all a Happy New Year.

I could well be logging the ups and downs of my Hogmanay on my Twitter account. You might have seen that I like Twitter so much that I have placed it above Delicious on my sidebar.

1 comment