New Year’s Eve/Day is my favorite moment of the year.

I don’t quite know how to justify that. It has none of the treacle of Christmas, none of the pomp of Independence Day, none of the masquerade of Hallowe’en. It pertains not to love, or Irishness, or veterans, or mothers, or any other specific theme which provides justification to our other major holidays. It’s just the passage of the calendar from one year to the next. Which is arguably meaningless, as there is nothing in the stars to dictate when we should cleave one year from the next, but mere historical convention. In the parlance of kids these days, the calendar is a social construct.

But still. Arbitrary milestones in the inexorable passage of time awaken strange and unbidden emotions in my soul. Just as I silently but intently observe the moment my car’s odometer ticks from 39,999 to 40,000, so do I feel a thrill when the clock strikes midnight on New Year’s Day. A chill, even.

Yes, it’ll be gone in a blink, and when I open my eyes, 2026 will come rushing in, second by relentless second of it, and we’ll once again be marching onward to the ceaseless drumbeat of history.

But that frisson as for an infinitesimal moment we pass through that liminal space where it is two years at once and no year at all, where 2025 has died but 2026 has not yet been born, where time ceases to exist, I catch my breath, and I brush against the face of eternity? I live for that.

I know it’s weird, but I wonder if you do too.

My culture observes several rituals pertaining to New Year’s celebrations, which involve champagne, a countdown, a ball drop, silly year-shaped glasses, and kissing romantic partners, but over the years I have also amassed many private New Year’s observances.

I live in Pacific Standard Time (UTC-8), which means that the Line Islands of Kiribati, which lie in the furthest time zone ahead (UTC+14), welcome the New Year at 2 a.m. on December 31st, my time. Accordingly, I’ll stay up to mark the moment the new year comes into existence on Earth. A few moments later, somebody will probably edit the Wikipedia page for 2026 to replace the text “2026 (MMXXVI) is the upcoming year” with “2026 (MMXXVI) is the current year in parts of the world where the time zone is UTC+14:00 or earlier”.

I’ll probably go to sleep not long after that, and when I wake up, New Zealand (UTC+13) and Australia (UTC+11) will have welcomed the New Year, and many of the East Asian countries too. There will probably be a news article about the first baby born in 2026. Some people will also have died in 2026, too, although in all likelihood none of them will be notable, and the Deaths in 2026 Wikipedia article will still be empty.

Seldom do I have reason to visit timeanddate.com on any other day of the year, but on New Year’s Eve, it will account for several tabs in my phone and laptop’s Web browsers. Every hour (and occasionally, the half hour) will mark the passage of some countries into the new year. If I know people in those time zones, I’ll text them Happy New Year! at the appropriate hour, adorned with a modest cornucopia of emojis. 9 p.m. and 10 p.m., my time, tend to be especially busy, as I have loads of friends on Eastern Time and Central Time, respectively.

I used to designate a special spot in my family’s house where I would stand every New Year’s midnight. That was my spot, by the doorway to the living room where the TV would be showing the ball drop. There was a cyclical aspect to that—it ensured that I’d begin and end every year in the same spot. These years, I’m more frequently out dancing, and so I’ve abandoned that particular ritual, but I do maintain a running list of all my New Year’s locations.

Every year since 2011, I’ve determined to make my favorite song, Glenn Miller’s “Moonlight Serenade”, the last song I listen to in the year. Sometime in the final hour I’ll pop in my earphones (or, in later years, AirPods), and as the three minutes and twenty-two seconds of the track play, I’ll review the year I just had, as a highlight reel unspooling in my mind. I can time it very well now. Each four-measure phrase in the music corresponds to roughly 23 days; each month goes by in roughly 17 seconds of music-time. By the ending chords, the present will have caught up to me.

(There are other songs I’ve grafted on to the ritual over the years. Typically, Harry James’ “I Had the Craziest Dream”, with vocals by Helen Forrest, is my second-last song of the old year, and the BBC Big Band’s hi-fi rendition of “Moonlight Serenade” is my first song of the new year, but they don’t come with mental year-in-review short films. That would be too much.)

Naturally, I’ll also partake in the champagne, the ball drop, the countdown, and everything that the people around me are doing, whether they be kith or kin. I’ll text my other Pacific Standard Time friends, in approximate order of their importance in my life. And I’ll revel in the moment, dedicating the first several minutes of the new year to the people in my immediate vicinity, chuckling dutifully when they trot out variations of the old joke, “I haven’t seen you since last year!” They’ll probably stick around for an hour or so, and then everybody will leave, and the rest of us will make half-hearted attempts to clean up the mess and gather the champagne glasses for the dishwasher, and at 2 a.m. I’ll find myself lying awake in bed.

And then I walk myself through the Recalibration.