New Year’s grief

Let’s face it, New Year’s Eve is practically a festival of pressure. Pressure to choose a memorable way to enjoy the evening. Pressure to spend that evening in a gown or tux, with someone special. Pressure building up to midnight, and that perfect kiss at that magical hour — which, of course, kicks off the pressure of all those many resolutions. “It’s a sad holiday. It never really delivers,” said Brian Battjer, a New Yorker who speaks for everyone who winces at that inevitable question, “What are you doing for New Year’s?” A Gallup Poll taken Nov. 19 through 21 quantifies the angst. The organization asked 1,015 adults to pick their favorite holiday: 63 percent chose Christmas, 27 percent selected Thanksgiving, a mere 9 percent said New Year’s. (The remaining 1 percent had no opinion.) Blame your ancient predecessors, the ones who started this whole tradition.

“It’s not a modern holiday, it goes back to the Roman Empire,” said Anthony Aveni, author of “The Book of the Year: A Brief History of Our Seasonal Holidays.”

Marking the end of the year “is an age-old custom that applies across cultures,” said Aveni, a Colgate University professor of astronomy and anthropology. “It’s what you do when you see the salt running out of your timer.”

Massive parties were how peoples such as the Romans, Aztecs and Mayans spent the last of their annual lucre, Aveni added. “It’s also a time to spend the last of our emotional resources, looking forward to a better time.”

But for Battjer and other New Year’s naysayers, the event is more worrisome than wonderful.

“For weeks in advance people are trying to nail you down,” the 28-year-old said. “You don’t want to say yes to a party when you don’t know if something better may come along.”

Then the night arrives, “and there are so many places I want to go. And there’s always that feeling of, the ball’s going to drop and we don’t have time to get to the other party so we’d better stay here.”

Even worse, you may end up stuck at one of THOSE parties. You know the ones.

“That party where everyone there is wishing they were somewhere else. You can just tell,” he said.

This swirl of anxiety inspired a song of the season: “It’s Just Another New Year’s Eve,” copyrighted in 1977 by pop singer Barry Manilow and his longtime lyricist, Marty Panzer.

“Barry called and said, `You know, there’s no New Year’s Eve song that tells how people really feel,”’ Panzer recalled from his Los Angeles home. The two agreed it should be a contemplative ballad: Sometimes life is a struggle, but we should be happy making it through another year.

“We literally wrote the song in 48 hours from the time he called,” Panzer said, with Manilow creating the melody and Panzer penning the lyrics. “He recorded it live in concert 48 hours later.”

The platinum record of “It’s Just Another New Year’s Eve” now hangs on Panzer’s wall.

The lyrics, in part:

“We’ve made mistakes,

But we’ve made good friends, too:

Remember all the nights we spent with them?

And all our plans,

Who says they can’t come true?

Tonight’s another chance to start again.”

“It’s one of our favorite songs” of the dozens of hits the two have created, Panzer added.

Many Americans want just that, an evening of quiet contemplation. Although tens of thousands turn out for raucous celebrations — an estimated 500,000 annually in Times Square alone — most opt to spend the night at home.

That’s what a survey by Domino’s Pizza has revealed for the past two years.

Last year at this time, Domino’s and Impulse Research queried 1,232 persons on their New Year’s Eve plans. Sixty-seven percent said they planned to stay home.

And while 31 percent had planned to go out to party the previous year, only 28 percent actually did.

“Ultimately, they want to share the time with families and people they love,” said Domino’s spokeswoman Holly Ryan, adding that the Ann Arbor, Mich.-based company sells about 50 percent more pizzas on New Year’s Eve than a typical night.

As the clock inches toward midnight this year, Professor Aveni will be in Mexico on a lecture tour; Panzer will probably be with Manilow, as he has been each Dec. 31 for decades; and Ryan and her husband will be returning from a family visit to Florida.

Battjer has yet to decide.

“New Year’s. I hate it,” he said.