The Hitchhiker’s Guide to New Year’s Eve

New Year’s Eve on Earth is a peculiar temporal celebration where humans collectively decide that one arbitrary point in their planet’s orbit around its unremarkable yellow star deserves explosive jubilation and synchronized intoxication.

The event centers around the curious human obsession with counting down from ten to one, as though the universe might fail to continue without their vocal encouragement. This countdown culminates at midnight, a time which, due to Earth’s rotation and the humans’ insistence on dividing their planet into “time zones,” occurs at 24 different moments across the globe, creating a rolling wave of celebration that would confuse any sensible interstellar traveler.

Unlike the Quantum Phase Shift Parties of Betelgeuse, where revelers actually experience the same moment simultaneously across multiple dimensions, Earth’s New Year celebration is strictly linear and disappointingly bound by conventional physics.

The primary ritual involves the consumption of “champagne,” a carbonated fermented grape liquid that humans have decided is the appropriate beverage for marking temporal transitions. This pales in comparison to the Chronological Shift Ceremonies on Fraxi IV, where participants drink liquids that actually allow them to perceive time backwards for approximately 3.7 microeons.

Humans also engage in the practice of making “resolutions,” which are essentially promises to themselves that they have no intention of keeping. These commonly include pledges to reduce body mass, increase physical movement, or decrease the consumption of the very substances they are actively ingesting while making said promises.

In major population centers, large crowds gather in public squares to watch illuminated spheres descend slowly down poles. The most famous of these occurs in a place called “Times Square” in New York City, where thousands of humans stand for hours in often freezing temperatures, without access to waste elimination facilities, simply to witness this ball drop in person rather than on their primitive viewing screens from the comfort of their dwellings.

Compared to the Galactic Renewal Festival on Zeta Reticuli, where participants actually help recalibrate the fabric of spacetime through synchronized thought patterns, Earth’s New Year’s Eve is remarkably inconsequential to the cosmos at large. However, it does rank slightly above the Annual Chronometer Reset Ceremony on Vogsprite III, which consists entirely of silent meditation on the concept of continued existence.

For the intergalactic traveler seeking authentic Earth experiences, New Year’s Eve offers a fascinating glimpse into humanity’s desperate need to find meaning in astronomical cycles and their remarkable ability to transform calendar transitions into excuses for behavior they would find unacceptable on most other days.

Just remember to bring your own towel. Earth’s New Year’s Eve celebrations are notoriously messy affairs.