WHY NEW YEAR'S EVE IS WORST NIGHT OF YEAR Dec 31 2003

By Christopher Hitchens

LORD Chesterfield once wrote to his son and said that he had himself broken entirely with New-Year custom and practice and "retired to bed early, sober and alone".

It's not the sort of thing that a chap likes to admit.

At the Hitchens household, as a general rule, or anywhere that household or its members may be travelling, guests and companions are beseeched or even enjoined to ply the corkscrew to that next bottle, pluck another Havana from the humidor, throw down one last careless truffle, postpone that dull "working breakfast" and in general to call back the cab firm and cancel.

The night is young and the newspapers haven't been delivered yet.

But tonight the phone will be off the hook and the evening air will be rent by nothing more than a well-mannered snore. The bottles will be ranged in strict military order as usual, but the corkscrew will lie blamelessly in its drawer.

The cleaning lady will not be greeting the dawn of the New Year with her customary squeal of shock, even of disapproval. Why should this be? I was walking home one fine recent evening with my own first-born and suggested to him that we might break the journey in a favoured bar of mine.

But what was I thinking? Even before we got to the door, I could see through the window that every stool bore a grisly burden: a festive customer with a wobbly smile and a pack of colleagues around him. Paper money was being waved to attract the attention of the over-worked staff.

Young women were ordering things with cream and umbrellas in them.

There could be no doubt of it, some annual office party or after-work spree was in progress. We trudged home wordlessly and threw some thick and bloody steaks on the grill. Once there, I could exert manly control over the pace and choice of drinks, viands, guests and ashtrays without being jostled or slammed on the back in false bonhomie.

Had we stayed out and made it to closing time, we would have endured the zoo only to find puke-flecked pavements, morose and lachrymose customers wondering why they hadn't had such a good time.

You can get this combination of boredom and horror practically every night between pre-Christmas week and New Year's Eve, but the Eve itself is the worst, not to say the limit.

The Christmas decorations are usually still up, so whether in a place of public resort or at a private home you are confronted with kitsch: reindeer horns and maudlin cards and scratchy, tinselly trees getting in the way.

The atmosphere of false gaiety is enough in itself to get the revolver rattling against your teeth, but then the most over-rated ritual of the year kicks in and you may be seized by a stranger and asked to count backwards en masse. Big deal.

They even make it hard to stick at home and vegetate in front of the box. Having already endured things like the sovereign's Xmas message to the Commonwealth, we are given by our media masters things like the Pope's New Year address or a round-up of preparations for equally silly celebrations across 15 time zones.

It's one of those occasions, like a World Cup or a royal wedding, when it is assumed on all sides that you, too, want to be part of the fun. At any rate, you are counted in whether you fancy it or not. You may even be accosted and asked to tell people what your resolutions for the coming year may be.

My answer is the same as usual. I resolve to lie low, de-carbonise the liver, recharge the batteries, save the money, catch up on the slumber and begin 2004 with a head start on the sorry figures who didn't have as good a time as they had expected on the night before.

Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair

TONIGHT'S TALE OF WOE...

380,000 people will be homeless with around 500 sleeping rough.

33 % of clubbers will take a dangerous cocktail of booze and drugs18,000 people will ring the Samaritans ..a rise of 10 %£128.90 spent by the average Brit who goes out.

66 % of revellers will reach hazardous booze levels.

300% more domestic violence calls to police70%more people will call an ambulance.

100% more people drink and drive.