Where are the New Years of Yesteryear?

By STANLEY PRICE, Traditionally New Year's Eve is meant to arrive with all the blessed relief of a pagan purge. It is Bacchus time, and after all the Vienna Boys' Choirs with their `Nage Nachts,' the pious preachings exhorting us to transient good will, the Queenly messages, the recordings from King's College Chapel, and all the extra posts bearing their loads of reproduction Madonnas with their Cow and Gate babies, randy old Bacchus only just comes in time. And New Year's Eve, wondrous prospect, is not a family festival. Instead of gathering one's near and dear ones round the log-piled hearth, custom enjoins us to flee from them on New Year's Eve as from a plague. The family abandoned,' it is the time to gather the golden friends of one's youth about one, to recapture with them the spirit of New Year's Eves past when Jeroboams were popped, when what was therein flowed like water, when Charley did those marvellous imitations, when the blonde girls, poured into those strapless evening gowns, danced closer ever closer, and there was the champagne- whispered promise of starting a New Year in some cosy corner of a foreign bed. . . .

It is not till about December 29 that most of us over thirty realise that this year we haven't been invited to a New Year's Eve party. Back in October Gerry said he was having one, but a phone call to Gerry, on the pretext of inquiring about his youngest child's health, elicits from his charlady that the whole family have `gone to the country.' Surely then Wallace ,should be having his annual binge. One feels a bit guilty about not having seen him since Whitsun, but a friendly phone call now. . . . Wallace explains he has just moved house, and, as the floorboards aren't down in the living-room yet, has to admit that this year he just isn't having one of his usual parties. As a result of this abortive phone call, however, one is now committed to having lunch with him 'early in the New Year' instead. Surely, somewhere this New Year's Eve somebody or other in goat's feet must be dancing the antic hay, the bossanova, or even the twist.

There is no more frustrating feeling than this annual pagan urge without any possibility of Bacchanalian fulfilment. It is the same predica- ment as that of the poor Vestal virgin left behind tc guard the flame while her more fortunate

fellow-virgins went out to merry rape in the Groves of Academe or whatever groves they were defiling that season. The temple Cinderella had but philosophy with which to comfort her- self, and that should be enough for us too. We should put our goat's feet under the' bed and forget about them.

This acceptance, however, requires real maturity, and maturity in these matters is not easily reached by those who sentimentalise their past. On New Year's Eve there is a terrible temptation to try to forget that 365-day lapse between New Year's Eves, to imagine all is as it was back in the days when it only took an Alka-Seltzer to cure a hangover. For those lucky few, the really mature, Ncw Year's Eve will be seen for what it really is—a chimera, the last flicker of a pagan pulse in their middle-aged Christian society. The facts will be quite obvious to the mature—the golden companions of their youth are now somewhat tarnished executives with mortgages and school fees to worry about on New Year's Eve as on all other eves. Charley, who was always the life and soul and did such splendid imitations, is now in tele- vision (on the administrative side) and lives out beyond Weybridge with an increasingly senile mother. The blonde girls in the strapless evening gowns are now married to other men, and have allowed their fecund hips to be put to their rightful purposes; and now on New Year's Eve

• can't get baby-sitters to look after the results. And as for those cosy corners of a foreign bed . . . that path leads to those decrees, nisi and absolute, which add crippling alimonies to paralysing mortgages. Besides which, a decent Jeroboam of champagne now costs i14 8s.

For the mature all will be simple on December 31, 1963. They won't attempt to resuscitate the festive grinning corpses of yesteryear, and if they do go to parties they will go with that calm resigned spirit in which they go to parties at any other time of the year. If they stay at home they will not turn on television to watch the BBC, suddenly north of the border, squeezing every last hog out of Hogmanay, or watch a load of drunken ruffians at midnight trying to climb Eros at grave risk, paradoxically, to those very parts which are Supposedly dedicated to the service of Eros. Instead they will read a good book, and possibly at midnight pour the wife a small glass of port before retiring to face yet another year together.

Inside every mature man there is, of course, an immature man screaming to get out. It is only natural that on New Year's Eve he should scream his loudest. When else does one experience so acutely the sensation of being in the wrong place with the wrong people at the right time? Per- sonally I have my own method of achieving instant maturity on New Year's Eve, and this year if I'm not invited to a party (which seems most unlikely, as already two people have told me they might be having one) I shall practise it. I hope others may also benefit from knowing about this method. It is very simple. All one does is think of the worst New Year's Eve one has

ever spent, dwell lovingly on the details, and feel duly grateful that this year, etc., etc.

In my case I think back to New York some years ago. The impulse to paganism there on New Year's Eve is greater than here, New Year's Day in America is a public holiday, and not to put oneself in a pbsition to have a hangover on it seems vaguely unpatriotic. I had almost

despaired of welcoming in the New Year properly in the New World when a thoughtful anglophile friend invited me to a party---not his own, of course. He told me it was to be a D.1 affair in the penthouse-apartment of a young man who was the son of a famous millionaire.

My friend collected me, duly dinner-jacketed, at 11 p.m. and we proceeded to that Nirvana of

all American materialists. a Park Avenue pent- house. A butler opened the door. I was intro- duced to our host, an immaculate young man who led us into a room where Picassos and

Matisses jostled each other on the walls. Else- where, however. there was plenty of room. Six

young men in evening dress were the only other guests. Nowadays one would have to be blind or

a saint, preferably both, not to worry about f.

being at a. party that consisted solely of eight immaculate young men. I even remembered someone telling me that some Americans took it for granted that all Englishmen were 'like that.' The host, obviously ill at ease himself, quickly put my fears at rest; he kept saying, worry, men, the girls will be here soon. Lots of them coming.' But as midnight approached there were still the nine of us stand- ing solidly male among the Martinis. Just before midnight our host switched on the television, and we saw other people, tantalisingly many of them women, having a good time in Times Square. As' twelve struck we all shook hands and self-consciously wished each other 'Happy New Year.' Then we went into the dining-room where a spread obviously designed for at least fifty people was laid out. The dining-room walls couldn't have been very thick under their weight of art treasures, because from the neighbouring apartment we could hear the sounds of a real Breakfast at Tiffany's party. There were girls at that party. Lots of them. We could hear them

screaming with pleasure and -laughing with de-

light. I gnawed my turkey leg and watched the seven other guests all mentally tussling with the same problem—how could one, without offend- ing the host, get out of his apartment and into the one next door. An hour later, the problem unresolved, I went home.

This New Year's Eve, if I am forced to sit at home in my maturity I shall think of all those men in dinner-jackets all over the world not having a good time. 1 shall realise calmly, maturely, with my own glass in my own hand

(no putrid punch in it either) that beyond a certain age in our kind of society one is a fool to be an uninhibited pagan--even once a year.

'Six young aim in evening dreAs. were the only ,euests: