new year’s eve – the civilized holiday
Fireworks by Laurie Lipton
New Year’s Eve is, I think, the most civilized of our holidays. Consider the following:
- The whole world celebrates it.
- No one is excluded based on nation, race, or religion.
- Expensive gifts aren’t necessary.
- No one argues with family over holiday dinner.
- It’s a celebration of the time we spend with each other.
- We promise to do better.
- Alcohol is imbibed, but St. Patrick’s style debauchery is not the norm. Apple cider is acceptable. This obviously doesn’t apply to South Philly.
Books for the people: From Black Power/Grad Skool Rulz
orgtheory.net 
The whole world does not celebrate the new year on Jan 1st. This is a secular western holiday. Most religions have their own new year. It has also been a bit of a reality in this world that the civilized is always, so some extent, exclusionary. This spirit of egalitarianism has led us to reality television instead of any sort of high culture.
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August
January 2, 2014 at 8:49 pm
Sorry but this post is simply embarrassing. Fact 1: Most of the Islamic World does not celebrate the New Year. Fact 2: Westerners seem to be totally unaware to what goes on in the world that exist outside of the images produced by the Western Media.
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palavrot
January 3, 2014 at 12:08 am
By “most” do you mean over half of all countries with an Islamic majority? Because I’ve lived in the Middle East, and to my knowledge, Saudi Arabia and Qatar are the only Islamic countries that don’t have major New Year’s celebrations. If you have sources that say otherwise, please share them.
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Chris M
January 3, 2014 at 6:52 am
Within a reasonable range of parameters, the Drake equation predicts the existence of at least one more intelligent civilization in the Universe. It is highly unlikely that the orbit of that planet around that star takes 365.26 solar days, and even if it did it is highly unlikely that it is perfectly synchronized with that of earth. So the most offensive thing about this post is that it excludes possibly billions of intelligent beings who celebrate new year’s day at a different time than we do. Maybe they do it during the dog days of earthly July; who knows.
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Omar
January 3, 2014 at 7:25 pm