Reach for the skies

Crossing time zones might seem an extreme way to avoid the new year countdown, says Julian Baggini. But it's what you do next that really matters
This New Year's morning I expect to have woken up feeling as if my stomach has been turned inside out and my head filled with concrete. Hopefully, it won't be as bad as two years ago, when I clambered aboard my early-morning train and had to head straight for the toilet. But what should I expect? Nothing makes you feel rotten quite like jet lag.

For the third year running, I will have seen in the New Year alone at 30,000 feet. I say "seen in", but flying long haul in economy class from west to east is probably the best way of avoiding Auld Lang Syne. One minute it can be 23.45 and the next you've crossed a time zone and it's 00.46. Midnight sometimes never strikes at all.

People tend to react in two ways when I tell them how I deliberately and repeatedly book my return flight from an annual conference on the number one party night of the year. Some think I'm a miserable sod who is missing out; others envy my escape.

No celebration seems to polarise opinion as much as new year. You can divide people into the revellers, the resolvers and the rejecters. Revellers tend to be people who love parties and clubbing in general and New Year's Eve is the one night when you can be sure "everyone's up for it" and determined to have a good time.

Then there are the resolvers, whose touching optimism means that no number of previous failures to stick to resolutions diminishes their faith that this year will be different. Anyone who is a member of a gym will be prepared for extra company in the first few weeks of January before resolutions fade and people slough back to the comfort of the fridge.

Finally, there are the rejecters, who argue that new year is meaningless, since the day we change calendars is completely arbitrary. Add to this a distaste for the "enforced fun" feel of New Year's Eve and the recognition that most resolvers are sad and deluded, and you can see the case for dismissing new year out of hand.

But aren't all three groups in danger of missing something? Take the rejecters. If you're not the kind of person who generally screams the smiling scream when friends enter the room, dances badly but enthusiastically, or thinks a two-for-one offer on Red Bull and vodka is a bargain, not a form of punishment, the compulsory jollity of New Year's Eve is obviously not going to agree with you. As for resolvers, the problem is not the idea of taking stock and making changes, but the cack-handed way most people do it. Perhaps this is because we don't think enough about our resolutions. If we thought more about what we want from life and what we realistically need to do to get it, then maybe we would make fewer resolutions but stick to them.

Nor should we worry that the date has been arbitrarily chosen. Humans are creatures of habit who need rituals and markers, so new year is as good a time as any.

That's why whether you woke up this morning with a hangover, jet lag, or refreshed by a cocoa-powered deep sleep doesn't matter. It's how we spend the next 364 days that counts.

· Julian Baggini is the author of What's It All About? Philosophy And The Meaning Of Life, published by Granta,

Today's best video

Today in pictures