We’ve made it through the trifecta of Christmas/Hanukkah/New Year’s once again (and feel free to deem it a “quadfecta”, if you celebrate Kwanzaa.)
I spent Christmas Day with co-workers, in a day strikingly similar to Thanksgiving Day. There were saccharine displays of holiday cheer, including the Journal Star Christmas Sing: an annual event where an age-old tradition is wielded like a knife at a younger generation, forcing them to spend an arctic evening singing carols with their families at the Peoria Courthouse Plaza.
But let us not forget the earthquake-strength pressure of New Year’s Eve. A simple calendrical change suddenly causes us to sweat and panic: do our plans sufficiently reflect the scale of celebrating an entire year passed? We put on our finest – even sloughing through snow, this year – to toast each other with plastic champaign flutes and blow our noisemakers.
“Then fill the cup, fill high!”
-James Russell Lowell
Bill Sharpe watches the falling snow from the parking deck adjacent to the Jansen building as he takes a break from work in downtown Peoria. (Adam/Journal Star)
East Peoria Festival of Lights
New Year’s party preparation
Families First – Celebrate ’08, East Peoria
Illinois enacts state-wide smoking ban, effective Jan. 1 2008
And so the carousel spins, straight into 2008
The beginnings of a snowy New Year’s Eve
Errant noise-makers
Midnight toast
Mr. Monopoly