Continuing exciting discussions at VFR (for people who are not terminally preoccupied with the approaching meaningless New Year’s holiday).

Comments have just been posted in the following recent entries:

Pat Vespasian?

The empty conservatism of Theodore Dalrymple

Coulter’s argument for Romney

Another white female pays the Eloi tax

Is sexual freedom at the core of Western suicide?

The Burning of Institute d’Egypte

Problems in Bachmann campaign

A response to the knifing in Oxford Street

Also, may I remind readers, since VFR does not have automatic comments, but I prepare and post comments myself, which allows for VFR’s unique discussion forum, if you want your comment posted, the best way is to put the title of the entry in the subject line of your e-mail. If I have to figure out which entry your comment is directed to, especially if more than a day has passed since the entry was originally posted, it is much less likely that your comment will be posted. Thank you.

- end of initial entry -

December 31

Pentheus writes:

Re “Continuing exciting discussions at VFR (for people who are not terminally preoccupied with the approaching meaningless New Year’s holiday)”:

I was going to wish you a Happy New Year, until I saw this post headline.

So, I guess now I am writing not to wish you a Happy New Year.

Hmm, doesn’t sound right, though.

OK—Wishing you a happy tomorrow, Jan. 1, 2012, and the next 364-¼ days following.

How’s that?

Best,

Your “terminally preoccupied” correspondent,
Pentheus

LA replies:

I wasn’t inveighing against New Year’s good wishes. And I’m not against people celebrating the New Year. It’s natural and normal and people will always want to celebrate such transitions. But to me personally, New Year’s hooplah, celebrations, parties, are silly. It’s just a change in a number on the calendar. The idea of making such a big deal out of it seems like an exercise in emptiness.

The Jewish New Year is a religious holiday. The Chinese New Year seems to be a cosmological holiday of some kind. In those cases the New Year has some larger meaning. Our New Year has no larger meaning. I can’t see going out and whooping it up because of a change of a number on a calendar. I found the number change exciting and meaningful when I was 11 or 12 years old, not afterward. But that’s just me.

However, I was moved and excited by New Year’s on January 1, 2000 (I was at Times Square), a new century and a new millenium, with a whole new set of numbers. It also brought me into a feeling of imaginative contact with the people who were alive when the year 1899 changed to 1900, and when the year 999 changed to 1000.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at December 30, 2011 03:10 PM | Send