Clean Slate Day

Today is my favorite holiday.

I’ll admit, Christmas is nice.

It would be better if you could eliminate the obligatory waste of life-minutes in your nearest wallet-emptying facility (also known as Wal Mart, or Target, or any other store where money disappears faster than elephants in a David Copperfield concert).

I’m fond of Thanksgiving as well.

What could be better than a day dedicated to football and overeating?

(Heck, who am I kidding, I get that every Sunday from September through February).

Easter isn’t a big day at my house, mostly because it doesn’t usually translate into a day off from work.

(How sly was it for somebody to schedule a holiday on a Sunday, when everybody’s off already? Where was the union when the powers-that-be were concocting this idea?)

It’s also one of the more confusing holidays, since it tends to hop around the spring-time calendar each year, and continues to use bunny rabbits laying multi-colored chocolate Easter eggs in an inexplicable tribute to the resurrection.

But my favorite is New Year’s Day.

While most of the American holidays celebrate something from the past, New Year’s Day celebrates the future.

It is the one day devoted to my most cherished ideal:

Hope.

Every time December 31 rolls around, people stop and make resolutions, a burning flare of hope in a darkened sky of despair.

“This is the year I lose 20 pounds,” they exclaim while finishing off the last drumstick from the Christmas feast.

Then they light up a post-meal cigarette and proclaim “this is the year I give up smoking.”

New Year’s Day is also the moment when we collectively take life’s proverbial Etch-A-Sketch, hold it upside down over our heads, and shake away the mistakes and regrets of the previous year.

In my vernacular, January 1 is “Clean Slate Day.”

No matter how badly you’ve botched the previous 365 days, “Clean Slate Day” marks the chance to start over with an empty score book.

It’s fitting that the turning of the page on New Year’s Eve is denoted by the dropping of a ball in Times Square.

Regardless of how many times you “dropped the ball” in the year past, now is your chance to start anew.

I’m excited about 2006.

It’s an unexplored adventure waiting for me to get in the boat.

It will be filled with changes and new opportunities and fun and heartbreak and all of the things that make life worth living.

And I’m going to do it in a body that’s 30 pounds lighter.

As soon as I’m done with the last of the New Year’s Eve cheese sticks and chicken wings.

Happy New Year, everyone!