Belonging in the New Year

What are you doing New Year’s? Where will you be when the ball drops on New Year’s? Who are you going to kiss New Year’s? So much conversation leading up to the one night we kiss one year goodbye and say hello to the next one, when in the blink of an eye it’s 2012.

Over the years, I’ve found that the key to New Year’s is low expectations for maximum enjoyment. That’s not to say I don’t like to have fun. But, if I don’t plan for New Year’s to be the most eventful night of the year then New Year’s is just a fun night out. After all, how much of a bummer would it be if the first night of the year was the best?

I prefer to have more to look forward to.

All this said, I do like to celebrate New Year’s with a group of people I love.

Family tradition dictates that we take a trip to Mohegan Sun Casino on New Year’s Eve Day (aka December 31). This year, that day was Shabbat, so we went on Friday. My mom and I love to shoot craps.

Of all the casino games, craps is definitely the most fun—it’s easiest to make friends. My mom and I love to make friends on the crap table. Unlike other games, everyone is playing together against the house. All of the players around the table root for the same outcome. We scream and yell when the shooter—or shootress, as I was dubbed—rolls a number, and collective groaning when the dice crap out. You depend on each other’s rolls to make your money and it’s a never-ending game. Unless you are completely antisocial, you are bound to make some friends.

In fact, New Year’s 2010 my mom and I ended up singing Kumbaya around the crap table. Like a said, it’s a communal game. It was a great precursor to New Year’s.

On the morning of New Year’s Eve, I went to synagogue with my family. It was comforting to return back to a place I have always felt is home. A rainy morning, only the Shabbat regulars attended the routine morning service. But it felt right to be with the people who watched me grow up, come back to my roots, as I was about to start another year on my own in New York.

How fitting that the rabbi’s sermon was about community. As he talked about creating a greater sense of community within our synagogue, I couldn’t help but think about New Year’s. It made so much sense. I have always spent New Year’s with my family, simply because I want to ring in the new year and wake up in the new year surrounded by people I love.

I have always found that what I do on New Year’s is less important to me than who I spend it with.

While this year I didn’t spend New Year’s Eve with the fam, I did spend it with a community of close friends in my building—making home a place full of people I know, love and have fun with. I welcomed the new year with a community of people I had worked to build bonds with in 2011; a perfect transition to 2012.

So even though December 31 was not the most exciting night ever, it was one full of friendship with a toast to belonging to a community.

Yup, I think I rang in 2012 just right.