The blithesome nature of the new year is for some everlasting. Only as recently as this morning for example, as I lounged by the Island swimming pool beneath the celestial radiance, I overheard a bubbly greeting of “Happy New Year “ from one resident to another, a rapturous salutation that was generously reciprocated.

One has to wonder when the pleasantry will come to heel. To be perfectly succinct about the query, when does the year end being new? There are no doubt supporters of Jane Fonda who, reasonably or not, adopt a mystical approach to progression similar to that of my late father’s constancy; namely, “Every day is Christmas!” Indeed for one such as I settled agreeably on Key Largo beneath the azure sky absorbing the burnishing rays, the proposition is not without its merit. I too might eagerly invite each new day throughout the year with similar zeal. I credit the attraction of my late father’s rationality to the synthesis of a lifetime of  inherited bluntness and a favourable inheritance generally speaking. His cryptic observations may also have been promoted by having been the eldest child of seven, a curious conglomerate whose corporate genes go back generations and perhaps even centuries from what I have garnered of my paternal ancestry.

But I waffle. For one thing – and for whatever reason – the celebration of the new year is anyone’s purport. Who am I or anyone else, by any standard, entitled to proscribe the undying proclamation of the new year? The inextinguishable ebullience may be no more than a nervous social tick. Or it may be an assertion of buoyancy when indeed the truth behind the gesture is entirely mournful, an utterance illustrative only of a hidden but salient disposition. I think we all agree that an acknowledgment of whatever character is at times both moot and enabling. Yet the avoidance of controversy – as creditable as it may be – does nonetheless fail to strengthen the ceaseless frequency of an otherwise stale and off-beat ejaculation.

It has been asserted somewhere by someone that a period of two weeks in the beginning of the New Year is a sufficient period during which the gleeful exchange of “Happy New Year” continues to be tolerable. I don’t know about you but I consider that a bit much. I mean, really, it’s basically over within a far shorter period following New Year’s Day and recovery from New Year’s Eve indulgence. I will say however that the longevity of the greeting affords a comfortable nod in even the most cool social circumstances – particularly when one wishes to avoid the monotony of resolutions or upcoming travel to the Caribbean.

The offensiveness of the greeting will undoubtedly continue before it subsides. Eventually however the expression will wane and we shall then resume our choice of daily salutations. They won’t have the same sense of having survived a stunning juncture of existence (as was particularly evident in the year 2000); but neither will we be condemned to marvel with ecstasy at an otherwise inconsequential event.