Saying no to the midnight kiss this New Year's Eve

What could be more  romantic than a New Year’s kiss at midnight? Quite a lot, argues Fiona Golfar, who thinks we should say goodbye to our annual snogging ritual
Fiona Golfar says no to the midnight kiss
Studio Firma / Stocksy United
Fiona Golfar19 December 2019

I’m a romantic. I want my life to be like a movie, I want surging music as I walk down the street and I want to love and live and hold hands in the park.

I want to be Sally when Harry comes to find her at midnight on New Year’s Eve and declares his undying love. I want to be Deborah Kerr with a blanket over my poor broken legs while Cary Grant realises the reason she didn’t meet him at the top of the Empire State Building at midnight. And I want to be Meg Ryan when Tom Hanks finds her there in Sleepless In Seattle. Because that’s what we all long for, isn’t it? That midnight kiss, the one where the world gets left behind and the stars come out in your heart as your lips meet. Isn’t it?

So why, when I am actually faced with that midnight pucker on New Year’s Eve, does my skin crawl? And by the way, it’s not just me. At the moment when that countdown to midnight starts and everyone in the room starts dashing around looking for a willing partner to smooch, my husband looks as though he wants to throw himself out of the window. Because to me (and thank God, to him) that midnight kiss is the worst thing imaginable. ‘It’s an enforced moment,’ he says. ‘There is nothing spontaneous or romantic about it.’

That’s the problem for me: a kiss should be a little bit of magic when the world stops and your heart soars. Not sloppy, with champagne slobber. If anything, the idea of having to kiss on demand makes me feel jaded, tired and, to be honest, a little bit sad. I’m not saying that other people shouldn’t kiss — I love seeing people lost in kissing, it’s like a remembrance of things past. But it’s a bittersweet experience.

I have been with someone for so long now that kissing is something that doesn’t happen as often as it did 20 odd years ago; like when we were first together and he pulled the car over to the side of the road on a Yorkshire moor to kiss me. But to be honest, even back in those days when we were happy to stay in alone and dance wrapped around each other to Richie Havens singing ‘Just Like A Woman’, we weren’t that bothered by the New Year’s Eve kiss.

Historians date the tradition of kissing on New Year’s Eve back to the Romans, who would mark the festival of Saturnalia with a kiss, and where debauchery was the main agenda. Not much has changed, it just seems to have transplanted itself to Trafalgar Square.

It doesn’t matter where I am, the endless ticking of the clock as the countdown approaches fills me with dread from about 9pm. Why stay up? you may well ask. Because I like to be with friends, I like to celebrate a new year that might bring new hope and in these difficult, dark days I need all the hope I can get. I will be in Cornwall, the fire will be blazing, there will be food and drink and love in the air. But one thing I know for certain is that at least for me, there will be no kiss to usher in the new year and that’s just the way I like it.

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