DEAR Baby New Year,
I've never actually written to you before. Maybe nobody has. Maybe you can't read, being a newborn and all. And maybe you don't have an address, since you tend to show up only in editorial cartoons and at the kind of big, drunken Dec. 31st parties that most of us, even in our worst nightmares, would never choose to attend.
No worries, Baby. Humankind will always keep in touch with you, even though you are a bit of a drooling drifter.
We plebes have never known much about you, and yet you're floating out there in our consciousness - like Santa, the Easter Bunny and the fiscal cliff. We're certainly aware that your debut is always the same night of the year, and that the other 364 nights serve as your denouement.
But considering how famous you are, you don't get much ink. I guess that's because it's hard to exploit you. Companies can't sell anybody anything based on your image, which is simply one of naivety. You also don't have much to say, so you're not going to get invited onto the George Stroumboulopoulos show.
Come to think of it, can you even speak?
Wikipedia claims you're male. As far as I know, nobody has ever pulled down your diaper for confirmation - or details - and I'm not going to be the first to volunteer.
Your limited wardrobe appears to consist of that one cloth diaper, a banner broadcasting the new year - in this case, the iffy-sounding 2013 - and a gleaming top hat. The latter suggests that if you're not especially put together, at the very least you're well connected. Who wears a top hat in this day and age other than you, Mr. Peanut and the Nestle Turtle? Posers, that's who. But maybe it's the posers who rule the beginning of every year and the dowdy, battered realists who see it out.
I don't mean to set a bummer mood in this, my first letter to you, Baby New Year. I'm really writing to tell you that I've decided it's a good idea to fixate on a character such as yourself, rather than on a nebulous plan like "As of 12: 01 a.m. on Jan. 1, 2013, I'm making a fresh start."
Just as Santa Claus is our secular repository for all the hopes and dreams of Christmas, we need a willing receptacle for our New Year's wishes. The way I see it, an enormous baby with a big, wobbly, top-hatted head is a bottomless tank.
Get ready for the onslaught, because you'll be to blame when our diets, planned personality changes or ambitions go south. "That damn Baby New Year didn't take my cholesterol concerns seriously," we'll be able to explain to our friends over croissants oozing with triple crème cheese. They'll nod sadly and pass us the chili fries.
Just be advised that we humans are clingy - we need life rafts, whether real or imagined. As a symbol of hope for the year to come, you're going to find that you have people sticking to you like Nutella sticks to a blanket. Deal with it.
It's true that it's a daunting responsibility to support the aspirations of seven billion people, but what else do you have to do? It's not like you can get into movie theatres in that get-up. Anyway, at the end of the year, who's to say that you won't be thanked, and copiously, for all the plans that you helped bring to fruition?
You'll be relieved to learn that it's a short-term gig. People do tend to lose interest in Baby New Year as you segue into Old Father Time, the role you'll assume next Dec. 31st. Society has a short attention span, and it's getting worse. I sure can't remember last year's model.
There is a way that you can distinguish yourself, however. Few Baby New Year designates have done it, and you'd be the first in memory.
Instead of cackling at us in that delighted way of yours, try taking our desires and fantasies seriously, whether our resolutions are as lofty as world peace or as humble as watching Mad Men from the first episode to the latest.
Put a little thought into inspiring us or giving us the emotional wherewithal to follow through on the hazy schemes for self-improvement that we come up with in a rush on New Year's Eve. Be not so much an iconic baby, and more like a real one - providing anybody near it with optimism, confidence, and resolve. Most importantly, real babies offer us all a disproportionate helping of happiness.
There's your role model, Baby New Year.
Go for it.
