Happy New Year!

Today was welcome back to work day for most of the people around my office. And since today is January 4th, it also means that it was "Hey! Happy New Year!" day for most people. "Happy New Year" as a greeting stikes me as very stupid, but when delivered in conjunction with an overall huge sense of excitement and energy by a person who has not worked in 10-15 days and therefore wants to burn five minutes mindlessly talking to you every time he/she sees you, then it can drive me crazy. First, to me that greeting loses it's novelty around 6pm on January 1st, so to hear it over and over in that forced chirpy way people deliver it in workplaces three days after the fact is too much. Second, I've been back in the office for a full week, people. I don't want to share details on how my holidays were anymore. I had a whole week to do it at work plus a whole three-day weekend to do it amongst friends and social acquaintenances. I don't want to do it anymore. Finally, and maybe the worst aspect of a seemingly banal phrase, "Happy New Year" has only one acceptable response, and of course that response is: "Happy New Year." What's the goddamned point, exactly? Yes, your vocal chords can pronounce four syllables in our shared language, and so can mine. I'm glad we just sorted that out. At my alma mater, Ohio State, there is a pastime among students and especially graduates to greet each other by spelling out the letters O-H-I-O. The first person calls out "O-H" and the second person responds "I-O." I hated this. I hated this from the first time I heard it. Even in the company of friends when a friend will start this greeting (to be fair--often out of spontaneous sports-watching excitement) I will go out of my way to ignore it or even say something disparaging about it. If how alumni choose to distinctly greet each other were the top criterion for choosing a school, then Ohio State would have been near the bottom of my list. The point here is that "Happy New Year"* is basically the same thing as "O-H-I-O." They're like telling a knock-knock joke but without the punchline. Terrible, stupid, a waste of time. Worst of all, people use them as excuses to pile on fake enthusiasm where it has no business.

*I'm excepting all exclamations within 15 minutes of midnight on New Year's Eve, of course. That's about the only time when it makes sense, and doesn't require a rejoinder.