Definition of New Years

by, Jenna Bargfrede

As the new year approaches around the corner one may begin to ask what does New Years mean? As a young girl I constantly wondered about the holiday. It always seemed trifling. What was the use of celebrating a thing that always comes? Birthdays will eventually end with a death. Christmas was a season of giving. Thanksgiving was there to show gratitude. Every holiday had some kind of purpose, but what was the purpose of celebrating the death of a year and the birth of a new one? After much thought I realized that there was a lot more meaning to the holiday than just the changing from one year to another. It means watching the ball drop, because no matter how stupid, how anticlimactic it is you always watch it. It means those family parties where you eat junk food/appetizers and watch a game or too. It means hanging out with friends, because they were there for you the entire year. It means new resolutions that will probably die in the first to weeks, but you try anyway because its a fresh slate and how can you pass that opportunity up. It means maturing. It means gathering the will to try again, to seize the opportunities that are given to you. It means the passing of time, moving on, change.

New Years celebrates life and how it continues indisputably. It celebrates the end of one year, the end of old, and transitions into the bright prospect of the new that is filled with opportunities. It celebrates your time on earth, because how else do we recognize a person's time on earth than by their years. New Years means many things, and I've begun to realize just why we celebrate it. So from the very bottom of my heart-- for perhaps the first time-- HAPPY NEW YEARS!