A few nights ago I followed my usual custom for New Year’s Eve, based on finally realizing that waking up hung over and broke isn’t really the most auspicious way to begin a new year.  I wasn’t especially entertained by watching other people get drunk in public places on TV, so I treated it like any other night.  Around ten o’clock I lay down on the couch with a glass of milk plus some fruit and cheese, and nibbled on this snack while I worked a crossword puzzle until I could feel myself start to nod off.  Then I toddled off to bed and fell asleep.

After only an hour or so, I was awakened by a series of booming noises that I thought might have come from some inebriated knucklehead pounding on our outdoor metal storage shed—or who knows, maybe a neighbor across the concrete-block property wall doing it to his own stuff.  But when I got up to investigate, it became clear that the noise was actually coming from the front of the house, where people in homes up and down the block were setting off fireworks.

When I was a kid, the few people who wanted to make public celebratory noise at home just flung open their doors at the stroke of midnight and, for less than sixty seconds, banged on pots and pans, played kazoos, or yelled things like “Happy New Year!”  It’s only very recently that there’s been a shift to explosive noisemakers and far more extended carryings-on.   

The effects have been less than positive—and in more ways than just forcing people who’ve chosen to get a normal night’s sleep to stay awake against their wishes.