Girls about how they celebrated the New Year alone
New Year is strongly associated with a noisy company, bursting with food at the table, a huge Christmas tree, happiness and smiles. But this is not always the case: for someone the New Year is a reason to rest from everyone, to rethink something in your life or to go to bed with a clear conscience at ten in the evening. We talked to people who forcedly or consciously celebrated this holiday alone, about how it was and whether they are ready to do it again.
Interview: Ellina Orujova
Julia
Two years ago I was not in the most successful relationship with a married man. I believed that it would turn out to celebrate New Year with him, but at the last moment his family appeared on the horizon, and I was left alone, in the company of a nervous breakdown and a prolonged depression. Then I saw in the online magazine a selection of the best New Year's parties in Moscow, among which was the immersive play "100 Years of Revolutions" at the hotel at Pushkinskaya. It took place only once and only on New Year's Eve, and the organizers had previously done super cool events, so I thought that I would not be disappointed.
All the floors of the hotel were shot for the party, each had its own historical show: one could sing revolutionary songs with Che Guevara, another listen to Mayakovsky read you Lilichka personally, and on the third one sneak through the corridor cut by laser beams the task of Morpheus from the Matrix. Having passed all the floors, the participants fell into an inverted forest under the roof: the entire ceiling was tightly plastered with living spruces covered with artificial snow that hung upside down. Between them there were creatures in Venetian masks, and since on the previous floors each revolution had to be properly noted, by the last stage it all merged into some kind of surrealist action. Here you go through a mystical forest - around the mask, people, music, champagne, and in the final you climb to the roof. You are covered with cold winter air, ABBA is heard, “Happy New Year” ABBA, fireworks start to explode over Moscow, beat the chimes. Full catharsis.
Immersive performance is a unique experience that is interesting to experience. When everyone else is having fun with friends and families, you should feel like a “loser” - but by participating in such a thing, you realize that you can be happy alone. Meeting the New Year with itself, you can rethink everything that was before, to become wiser. By the way, that year I began a new, wonderful relationship, in which there is no place for pain, or deception, or "suddenly" emerging families of others on the eve of New Year's Eve. So lonely holidays are not wasted, because, as they say, "the darkest time is before dawn."
Kristina
My parents and I chose tickets home for the New Year - I am from Tyumen, and I study in St. Petersburg - but everything was very expensive. Then I myself decided that there was no point in leaving, because there was still a session ahead for which to prepare. A friend called to celebrate with her company, but I didn’t know anyone there and refused: I think the New Year is not a holiday that should be celebrated with unknown people. So I stayed and was preparing to celebrate alone.
Every year, as far as I can remember, I look closer to the “Irony of Fate” case. I do not know what went wrong, but I missed the film. Nevertheless, I prepared everything, changed my clothes, called my parents - it was already two in the morning in Tyumen, and they were sitting at a party. The chimes chimed, a minute went by, when you need to make a wish, I nervously wrote something on a piece of paper, then I set it on fire, and mom and dad shouted FaceTime: "Christina, you will succeed, you will have time, come on!" Then my grandmother called, I talked to everyone and started to cry: it's so awful to look at parents who are having fun with the background of garlands while you are clinking with the phone. I didn’t even buy champagne because I couldn’t open it! In general, I felt very lonely - it was probably my worst New Year. Only one plus: now I know what it is.
In 2018, I also often felt lonely - when friends did not call somewhere or I went alone in an empty apartment. Often I think that the sign "How to celebrate the New Year, and you will spend it so" worked. This year I didn’t take the tickets home again, but I don’t want to meet the holiday alone. Recently I talked with my girlfriend, she also has no one to celebrate with, so we will probably unite and celebrate together. And then in my current apartment there is no Internet and TV, that is, the conditions for celebration are even worse than before.
Anastasia
My brother is periodically sick - there are bronchitis, laryngitis; now he is four years old, and then, it turns out, there were two. On New Year's Day, December 30, he began to cough — we inhaled him, but on December 31, he coughed suspiciously strongly — we called an ambulance. The doctor shouted at us, said that if we want his brother to live, we must go to the hospital. It was about eight o'clock in the evening: we quickly got together, for some reason, we took mum's salad in a bowl and went.
We were informed that the brothers should be placed in a closed hospital. The nurses, of course, were not eager to stay in the hospital at nine o'clock on December 31 - they had everything in tinsel, they laughed, and I hated everyone. As a result, mom and brother were left in the hospital, dad and I said goodbye to them through the window. My brother cried on the phone, worried about how Santa Claus would find him, how he would give the robot if he was not at home.
Dad and I came home at eleven o'clock, he asked: "Well, Nast, shall we put the meat in the oven?" I said that this is a rhetorical question, he replied: "I also do not want." We poured brandy: he stayed until the governor’s address (we live in Togliatti), I — until the president’s address and the “second” New Year, Moscow time. From the age of six I have been making the same wish: that everyone should have a good time. At that time it was really the only thing I wanted. My friends called me to celebrate, but I could not imagine how I was having fun somewhere - it seemed to me that now I have no right to do so. Also, SMS did not come, in the New Year there are always interruptions in communication. I think if I received at least some greeting, it would be easier. And so everyone laughs, they post funny pictures, and I sit in the best sweater, wash down brandy with white wine. Perhaps at such moments you look at people around you in a different way.
Varvara
About seven years ago I had no one to celebrate the New Year. I moved to another apartment, my grandmother and mother stayed in the old one - well, it somehow happened that I was celebrating alone. Then she got a taste and now I spend every New Year alone. I have my own rituals: a few days before the holiday I go shopping, I buy myself something as a gift - most often cosmetics or a pair of shoes. I decorate the apartment: I put little Santa, next to him is some kind of composition (I don’t dress up big trees).
On December 31, I stock up on capital: this day should be abundant. I do not cook a thousand salads, but I have to have everything I want: cola, champagne, my favorite beer, salad, cake, cookies. My masthavas are pizza and some delicious Belgian chocolate or designer sweets. I come home, put my favorite series "Poirot" (the main character, by the way, also celebrates the New Year alone) and turns off the phone after midnight - he managed to congratulate him. Sometimes I can go for a walk (I live across the bay), alone or with a friend, if super fireworks are released - but this is also half an hour home to home. I go to bed early - about two o'clock, I guess. This is the evening for me.
The family offered to celebrate with them, but there are plenty of people there without me - I arrive on December 29-30 to congratulate my mother and grandmother, that's all. Friends also called, but I do not like noisy companies: for me, three people are a lot. Of course, people are constantly pushing, saying: "Then at least get married, so that there is someone to celebrate." It sounds so "delightful" with the prefix "at least" - as if we are talking about buying a toothbrush. When my friends wonder how I can celebrate the New Year alone, I answer that I feel good about myself. It seems to me that celebrating alone is not boring when you have the rest of your life full. On noisy family holidays, everyone buzzes like flies, and everyone needs to give something - if you are not a millionaire, then the more people, the less the cost of one gift, and in the end you buy some nonsense. Instead, I'd rather wear new shoes, drink champagne and eat expensive chocolates that I would never bring.
Anna
That year I was twenty-four, and five years in a row before I worked in the New Year - I sang in a cafe. I liked two young men, I expected that at least one of them would invite to celebrate together, but this did not happen. There was also an option to celebrate with relatives or with the best friend, her boyfriend and friends. But a friend just under the New Year got sick with chickenpox, without her, she didn’t really want to go to friends, to relatives too. I preferred the third option: I chose one of the best coffee houses in the city (I knew that they didn’t have a New Year program) and decided that I would celebrate there without everyone. She told her friend that she was celebrating with relatives, and warned her mother that at nine o'clock in the evening I would go to my friend and we would go to friends together. Why did I do that? Surely they would start to persuade me to celebrate with everyone - sometimes people find it difficult to understand the wishes of another person if they do not at all coincide with their picture of the world.
At about nine o'clock in the evening my mother gathered to her grandmother, I told her that I would go a little later, but I would not particularly dress up. I received a gift from a friend who moved to Moscow - she asked not to unpack it before the New Year's night, so I took it with me. I also grabbed a book and a laptop and went to the coffee shop. I ordered a glass of wine, salad and fruit. I was the only guest: besides me there was only a guy who was sitting alone, but at times a waitress would sit down with him - later I realized that the girl had a shift for the New Year's Eve and this was her young man. American Christmas movies were on TV.
Somewhere at 00:40 the family came: a man, a woman and a girl of seven or eight. They took tea and asked to include the President’s address. I thought, why sit alone in the corner, and went out into the common room. The staff came during the anthem, everyone started to clink about what was: who had coffee, who had tea, who had water, I had a glass of wine. It turned out such a sweet union: no one knew anyone. Then I returned to my table, unpacked a gift - there was a diary of a creative person. I sat for a little longer, looked at the fireworks outside the window, read a book, then got ready and went home. I slept well, and the next day I went to the family for breakfast, said that we had a great time.
We have been taught since childhood that the New Year is built according to a certain pattern: Christmas tree, joy, gifts - and if this is not, then this is wrong, bad, sad. But what difference does it make when I want to spend the evening alone - from December 31 to January 1 or from March 28 to March 29, for example? If you understand that you are alone on the New Year, accept this and try to turn the situation in your direction. No need to cut a million salads, if you do not want - no one will tell you anything. I want to sob all the New Year's Eve, do it - you will get a psychological discharge. I want to sleep - go to bed at nine in the evening and enter the new year, slept and contented. This is not sad and not shameful - because you want it.
PHOTO: Flaffy - stock.adobe.com, lena_serditova - stock.adobe.com