‘Missing New Year’s Eve is the best thing to come out of 2020’

After a year of disappointment and sadness, the news that New Year’s Eve is all but cancelled is a welcome relief, says Sophie Gallagher

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The expectation for New Year’s Eve is simply too high. I’ve long told anyone who will listen, my theory about why 31 December can never be a truly perfect night out. In putting a single night on such a pedestal we, as a society, ruin it for ourselves. As Mark tells Jeremy in Channel 4’s Peep Show: “All rational people agree... it’s impossible to have a good time on New Year’s Eve.”

For me, the best nights out are always the unexpected ones. The one post-work pub drink that turns into one too many, the evening full of spontaneous decisions and chapter after chapter of anecdotes to share over a hangover fry up. The one where you bump into that person you haven’t seen since 2009, or the one where it doesn’t matter whether you go home at 10pm or 5am (which obviously means you always end up staying out till the sun comes up).  

New Year’s Eve defies all of these basic principles. For starters, you are held hostage to a clock. You have to be in the perfect location for the bongs (not to mention near someone worth kissing). You have had to fork out a large sum of money for a ticket or sell a kidney for an invitation to someone’s house (and they don’t want you wearing your new shoes on the carpet).  

Drinks are even more mind-bogglingly expensive than usual and regardless of where you go, you have to be ready to have a brilliant time, even if it is a dark, rainy Tuesday in December. How can we operate under such conditions?

The thought of a Wetherspoons sticky carpet underfoot or selfies with strangers-come-new-best-friends in the women’s toilets makes my heart quicken…

After a year like 2020 you’d think I’d be up for any night out, even one that is totally sub-par. And in a way, you are right. The thought of a Wetherspoons’ sticky carpet underfoot; taking selfies with strangers-come-new-best-friends in the women’s toilets; or eating chips from a polystyrene container on the front seat of a night bus makes my heart quicken apace. 

But I’ll happily wait another few months, for vaccines and decreasing case numbers, to show London how well I can sing all the words to Folklore.

To me it seems totally fitting that we would end the year by continuing the very behaviour that has defined the last 12 months. By sitting on the sofa, staying at home, and bickering with our bubble about the heating. 

Jools Holland and his Hootenanny will be playing in the background (but largely ignored), the alcohol will be free-flowing, and the comfort of bed only be a few steps away. 

You can get dressed if you want to, even put on a full face of makeup, and sing Auld Lang Syne as one year gives way to the next. There will still be all the things that actually make New Year’s Eve beautiful - the frantic text messages from loved ones at midnight, billions of us competing as the mobile networks surge, and the knowledge that you made it through another 365 days in a year when so many weren’t so lucky.  

If 2020 has taught us all one thing, it is that the best-laid plans are no match for the universe. So in honour of a night such as New Year’s Eve that habitually requires you to make plans weeks (even months) in advance to participate - choosing your location, your company, your outfit, your tickets, your midnight wish - let us all do away with NYE plans and embrace the smallness and spontaneity of a night off. 

You never know, it might be the best 31 December yet.