Bringing in the New Year

   Two days after Christmas I put up a Christmas tree?
  The day after New Year's Eve I have a party?

    Isn't that all kind of late?

    But by now, this being the third year of the event, a New Year's Day party at my house is an annual tradition. This year, I spent Christmas week with my son on Vashon Island, Washington. When I got home and turned my attention to the upcoming party, I realized that the house needed decorating, so I took my bow saw into the woods, cut down a little fir tree I had been keeping my eye on, set it up in the house, and decorated it with all my beloved ornaments. 

 

Then I made cookies.

Stained-glass-window cookies

Date bars

Hazelnut financiers

Eggwhite brownies

   Because eating black-eyed peas on New Year's Day is, according to Southern lore, good luck for the coming year, I set two large pots of black-eyed peas on the stove, one vegetarian, one with ham hock.

 I made two double batches of buttermilk cornbread. 

I set two bottles of red wine on the kitchen counter along with a corkscrew. I put white wine, sparkling water, and beer in a cooler nearby. I put every wine glass I had on the counter, along with water glasses.

    It was a drop-in-anytime affair. As guests arrived, I told them to help themselves.

    It was all a great success, because, really, for a good party all you need is good food and drink and great people, which I had in spades. 

    A parlor game might help, too. For this party, I suggested that guests bring three words or phrases for the new year, riffing on T. S. Eliot's lines: 

            For last year's words belong to last year's language

            And next year's words await another voice

            And to make an end is to make a beginning.

We put the words in a bowl, from which everyone drew a paper; then, in turn, we read the words. Sometimes the word wasn't comprehensible until the person who chose it explained it. "Maybe"? Well, yes, Margaret explained. It helps her take a step back and look at possibilities. "Autotelic"? "It means 'complete in itself,'" the guest explained, and comes from a history of Superman. My favorite word to come out of the game was ourobos, the end-in-the-beginning image, as of a snake with its tail in its mouth. (Last year's favorite was orophile, a lover of mountains.)

    My own three phrases played with past, present, future:

            A return to the wintry winters of the past. (Oh, I wish!)

            A future with a dependable democracy.

            All my loves and friendships always present in my life.

    That last phrase was fulfilled this holiday season, from Christmas with my son to a house full of friends on New Year's Day. As for the other two, I can only hope.