New Year’s Eve is just around the corner and if you haven’t already lost all of your friends and family due to passive-aggressive, political Facebook statuses or Twitter wars, you’ll likely be invited to a party.
New Year’s Eve parties are always the biggest parties of the year. They signify a magical time full of the belief that when the clock strikes midnight, we get to start fresh. We believe January 1st of any new year to be a giant eraser, which rids us of all that we’ve done for the last 365 days. Gone are all of the chemicals we’ve put into our bodies, all the lies we’ve told, all the pounds we have gained, all the child support we owe and all of the pets we’ve returned to the Humane Society for no good reason other than we like new stuff.
On New Year’s Eve, we fantasize about a new beginning despite the fact that we often spend this magical night with our old smelly significant others. As we count down the minutes to welcome what we hope will be an improved life, optimism rushes through our heads. We think, “Maybe this will be the year I finally realize that it’s not worth staying in a relationship just because I’m too lazy to find a new place to live and I’m afraid I’ll lose my favorite chaise lounge in the breakup. My body perfectly contours to that chair and that is often a once in a lifetime thing.”
For those of us who find ourselves single on New Year’s Eve, we imagine that the New Year will bring us new love. A love that won’t get drunk and erase all of the shows we’ve been excited to sit down and watch for weeks on our DVR. Instead, we’ll find a supportive 
partner who will remind us to take our birth control and feed the fish. **I know we all get busy, but the average Fantail Goldfish can only survive up to 8 days without food so it’s important that you designate one night a week to logout of Facebook for 5 minutes so that you can feed your pet.**
Therefore, on this special night, I hope that everyone reading this has party plans. Even if the party you are invited to will be full of people you do not like and you would much rather sit at home alone with one hand in a bag of salt and vinegar chips and the other in your pants while re-watching Season 2 of Dr. Who on Netflix because you still don’t get what all the hype is about. However, you’re not willing to give up on the show just yet because you want to be as cool as those people who “get it” think they are. None of this matters on New Year’s Eve though. All that matters is that you have a place to go where you can take pictures of yourself surrounded by other humans and then immediately post those pictures onto Instagram so that you do not look like a complete social media failure.
So in the spirit of starting over, I would like to share some tips on how to behave at a New Year’s Eve party. You may think you already know how to behave, but you also thought you could get an ACT score that would get you accepted into Notre Dame and look who ended up going the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh. So I guess you really don’t know it all. Enjoy!
1. DON’T, I repeat DON’T show up to the party naked from the waist down. This will prove to your fellow party-goer that you are not only gross, but presumptuous. There’s no way to know whether you will find someone at the party who will appreciate your baby-making parts. Pre-party is just too soon to tell. Therefore, keep your bottom half covered until someone at the party at least makes eye contact with you.
2. Always bring a gift or something to share to the party. For example, your brother’s wife. Let’s face it; he hates her and so do you. Once at the party encourage her to take those shots of Everclear and eat those vodka-infused gummy bears and then stand back and film her making some very bad decisions, which will be the proof that’ll end her reign of terror on your family.
3. Hook up and flirt with EVERYBODY! Even the catering staff. You never know who has a great connection on LinkedIn, which can really jump start your career in the upcoming year. If you show the world love, it will love you back.
4. Make sure you share with everybody at the party your religious beliefs. And be very belligerent about it. Get up in people’s faces and say, “Shame on YOU!” Or “If you were a real (insert the name of the religion), you wouldn’t eat so much bread!” Also, blame them for causing horrible events such as the New Kids On The Block/Backstreet Boys Reunion Tour of 2011.
5. Eat off everyone’s plates…while they are eating off of it. This indicates your dominance over the party and shows everyone that you are top dawn. Then with your mouth full of other people’s food yell out, “On my momma nobody better step to this ‘cuz I’ll eat up all the figgy pudding in this house.”
6. Dance like everybody’s watching. Show that party what it looks like to be a winner on the Wii. You just spent every single day during the last year playing Just Dance 2 so that you could finally achieve the highest score ever recorded (16,369) for Technotronic’s “Pump Up the Jam” and everybody needs to know this.
And finally…
7. Bring your kids to the party and leave them there. If you love them, let them go. If they come back to you then it was meant to be.
Happy New Year!
