New Year’s 2023

The last time I wrote about our New Year’s Day annual event was precisely a decade ago. I see that I started that one out about the trials and tribulations of travel during this season and I wrote about this year travel travails last week!

We bought our house 25 years ago though we have only been here full time for about 15. We loved this town since we first came 33 or 34 years ago just to visit Indian Market. At that time, we knew 2 people, a colleague from New York and a Curator,later Director, of the Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City.

When we did have a house to come to, we came regularly and always in summers and over New Years. How could we get to know more people? We hatched a plan. I figured that everyone does a New Year’s Eve party we would do one New Year’s Day. (I was wrong, there are lots of parties here on January 1, but we have stuck with it.)

One always meets new people over the year and we started to invite all those that we had gotten along with. Our group grew as people started to come regularly and bring friends. We learned that people loved the event because they get to see old friends that they have not seen in quite a while and they make new connections as well.

We get a particular kick out of having a younger generation join us. It helps us feel younger and relavent. Here is one of our youngest guests.

The world has certainly changed since we began this tradition, but our party is pretty much the same. We did skip one year because of Covid and a few years we had snow that kept our numbers down but this year about 60 friends joined us. It is an open house, but still people brought goodies.

We did have unusual competition this year because the inauguration of the Governor took place at the Lensic Performing Arts Center but several of our Lensic friends came after the festivities.

We have made a few minor modifications to our event. We now ask folks to sign in, do name tags and we have masks and hand sanitizer for anyone who wants them. When you have a large party and live outside of the town proper, guests park on the road. After dark, which happens early at this time of year, they have to find their way back to their cars, so I made a couple of Handicapped Parking Spaces in front of our garage, something we had not thought of in past years!!!

Rather than snow, rain was expected since the temperature went up to 48 degrees, most unusual for January 1 in Santa Fe. We were prepared for umbrellas, which as you know is the best way to have a rain free event!

Our menu has varied little over the years. Penelope selects the food and makes it look lovely on the platters. There is always plenty of wine and sodas but no hard alcohol. It is always interesting to see what goes and what remains as left overs because it is different every year.

It is shortly after 6pm the last guest has left. Eventually the table is cleared but two lovely presents look so good there as a reminder of our 23rd event.