I didn’t attend any fancy New Year’s Eve party. While the whole family was busy preparing dinner, I locked myself in my room, surfed the Internet, pored through 9gag.com, replied to chat messages and played games on my iPod.
New Year greetings started buzzing on my phone and my Facebook newsfeed by 7 p.m. Some of my friends who lived outside Davao invited me to Skype. I bid goodbye to 2011 rather silently, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t having fun.
Welcoming the New Year without firecrackers isn’t so bad. Our neighborhood was quite silent—I could hear only the faint sound of a karaoke machine from afar. Living in Davao City, I’ve gone through New Year celebrations without firecrackers for nine years! This doesn’t always mean bland and boring celebrations, though.
Many of my friends have adapted to this kind of lifestyle, and have found many ways to amuse themselves minus the noisy firecrackers.
We still freak out when we hear explosions. A firecracker-free New Year spares me the stress of listening to news about firecracker injuries and accidents (or worse, experiencing it myself). Those bloody images aren’t very pleasant to see at the start of the year.
The firecracker ban in Davao City has taught me to enjoy the things in life I often tend to overlook. For instance, family reunions and visiting friends’ houses to eat, laugh and enjoy each other’s company. I never get to do these on other days of the year.
Rare gathering
By 8 p.m., my family and I were having dinner. After that, we gathered at our uncle’s house next door, to chat and listen to music. This is something we can do only very rarely, because everyone seems to be busy during the other holidays of the year.
We spent the last few hours of the year gathered together and looking back at the awesome things that had happened during the past year. We ate, prayed, laughed, even did karaoke. Everything felt lovely.
At the stroke of midnight, all of us raised wine glasses (or in my case, a mug of chocolate drink!) to toast the new year.
My celebration didn’t end there. My friends and I continued our annual tradition of hanging out during the first day of the year. That meant raiding someone’s house, playing board games and watching movies, until we got tired of the look Brad Pitt wore in “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.”
And just like that, I felt the New Year magic: being with my dear friends and my loving family.