The Thing About New Year's Eve

It's New Year's Day, and you know what that means.

It means lots of people are hungover, lots of people are vowing to spend more time on the treadmill, and lots of people kissed a stranger at midnight.

The midnight New Year's kiss is an inexplicably big deal, especially if you're single. I suppose if you're in a relationship it doesn't matter as much because you can kiss that person whenever you feel like it. But if you're unattached, there's this weird pressure to find someone to put your mouth on right THIS VERY MINUTE. Not at 11:59. Not at 12:01. Only at midnight.

On past New Year's Eves, I've kissed my boyfriend at midnight, I've kissed friends at midnight, and I've kissed strangers AFTER midnight (and with all of them, we mutually lamented the fact that we didn't find each other earlier, as if this would have made any kind of difference). But I have never kissed a stranger at midnight. Usually it's like this big bummer where any of us who didn't find a midnight makeout get all cranky and "wah, another NYE without a random person's tongue in my mouth."

At some point, though, I stopped caring.

Last night, as the clock slowly crept towards midnight, the realization that I would not be kissing anyone came and left in seconds. I was surrounded by friends, some of whom I didn't even know a year ago but are fantastic nonetheless. I was drunk on champagne and too many shots of Jameson. I was dancing to that new awesome song by will.i.am and Britney Spears. And I was happy.

Because really, New Year's Eve isn't about strangers. It's not about the big project you have coming up at work, your mountain of student loan debt, or the guy who hasn't texted you in a week. It's about taking one night to do whatever the fuck you want with someone (or multiple someones) important to you. Even though nothing really changes on January 1st, it's still a reason to celebrate. And celebrating can mean any range of things - having a fancy dinner out, staying in and watching the ball drop with your significant other, or if you're me, screaming the lyrics to a Jay-Z/Kanye song as if you were participating in New York's first annual "Which White Girl Can Rap the Loudest?" contest.

None of these options involve getting up close and personal with some dude who I wouldn't even recognize on the street 2 days later. So I'll take my champagne, my Britney and my posse of awesome people. But the midnight makeout thing? I'll leave it to someone who gives a shit.