BurlingtonFreePress.com
Dec 27 2009
Should auld acquaintance be forgot? Yes
By Chris Bohjalian, Free Press Columnist ¢ Sunday, December 27, 2009
When I was a child, my parents’ New Year’s Eve parties were not
precisely chaotic studies in decadence, dissolution and debauchery,
but once when I was in elementary school, I did accidentally walk in
on two of their married friends necking in the bathtub in an upstairs
bathroom. This wouldn’t have been quite so disturbing for the three of
us if the couple in the tub had been married to each other.
Another time, when I was in middle school, my mother was having so
much fun at the New Year’s Eve dinner party that she and my father
were hosting that she forgot to serve dinner. It is an indication of
the amount of liquor being consumed that it was only when the dozen or
so adults were gathered around the television to watch the great ball
descend on Broadway that one of the guests first asked whether the
group was ever going to eat.
Their parties were actually pretty standard fare for that era and that
geography: The hard-drinking, hard-working, hard-playing suburbs of
New York City in the 1970s. Moreover, it didn’t have to be New Year’s
Eve for the parties to cross the line between boisterous and
bacchanalian. They had some doozies in the summer, too.
My father is Armenian and his first name is Aram, and one July they
had a costume soiree they called a "Harem with Aram." This politically
incorrect affair confused me even as a sixth-grader since, as far as I
knew, neither harems nor polygamy figured prominently in Armenian
culture. It was, like most of their parties, a fairly raucous bash.
One couple brought goats.
My parents loved their neighbors and they loved to entertain, but I
always suspected there was something a little desperate in their
friends’ behavior at those parties, especially the ones on Dec. 31. I
had the sense that for many of the grownups, all that alcohol and all
those cigarettes and all that forced bonhomie was a camouflage for
wistfulness and regret.
The reality is that New Year’s Eve has the potential to be
spectacularly depressing. Often we look back on the last year with a
combination of disappointment and self-loathing. We have resolutions
for the purpose of trying to make the coming year better — to see if
we can somehow stop making the same mistakes year after year … after
year.
Consequently, I don’t make resolutions, and it’s not simply because I
know I am a total lost cause. Likewise, I tend to steer clear of most
New Year’s Eve parties because there are too many middle-aged ghosts
from my childhood at the punch bowls.
On the other hand, I am a big fan of the Best Night and First Night
celebrations that so many towns and cities now organize. Even Bristol,
a reasonably small Addison County hamlet, this year boasts among its
Best Night entertainers magician Tom Verner, composer and musician
Pete Sutherland and the delightful women’s a cappella group, Maiden
Vermont.
The performers and performances I’ve savored over the years at
Burlington’s annual First Night — all of whom will be back again this
year — include Anais Mitchell, Circus Smirkus, Kamikaze Comedy and
Spotlight on Dance. I was a Lyric Theatre board member for six years,
which means I have also savored that group’s annual New Year’s Eve
cabaret close to a dozen times.
Now, I have not shared my New Year’s Eve demons with you this morning
because I want to discourage anyone from partying in a reasonable
fashion this coming Thursday night. But I have found that for me, the
best way to keep longing and sorrow at bay on New Year’s Eve may be to
look neither backward nor forward, but instead to live entirely in the
moment with the songs and stories of some of Vermont’s premier
entertainers.
May 2010 bring us all peace and wonder and joy. Happy New Year.
Write to Chris Bohjalian care of the Free Press, P. O. Box 10,
Burlington, Vt. 05402, or visit him at
http://www.burlingtonfree press.com/article/20091227/COLUMNISTS03/912270314/ Chris-Bohjalian-Should-auld-acquaintance-be-forgot -Yes