NEW YORK. A collection of unlikely political bedfellows will gather in Times Square this morning to launch what they say is a rearguard action to defend New Year’s Eve from attacks by academia, the mainstream media and self-appointed diversity spokesmen. “They wanted us to say ‘spokespeople,’ but we told them to buzz off,” said Oscar Darop, the founder of the Committee to Protect New Year’s Eve.
“Here’s a Gregorian chant that’s got a good beat, and you can dance to it.”
“New Year’s Eve” is celebrated in America under the Gregorian calendar, which was invented by Dick Clark’s older brother Greg in the last days of 1 B.C. It competes with the Chinese and Jewish calendars, which outscore the Gregorian on standardized tests and get into good colleges without having athletic skills.
Political pundit Bill O’Reilly delivered an emotional tribute to the New Year’s Eves of his youth that left many in the crowd teary-eyed. “Sure we had the Chinese and the Jewish calendars when I was a kid growing up with a gang of tough Irish kids like myself,” O’Reilly recalled wistfully. “We’d get drunk and go to their neighborhoods and beat the crap out of their calendars, and everybody got along just great under the one, true calendar of the Roman Catholic faith.”
Like a God to some.
A monotheistic cult similar to Rastafarianism has developed around New Year’s Eve with Guy Lombardo and His Royal Canadians taking the place of Ethiopian president Haile Selassie as divinity and spiked eggnog substituted for marijuana in the group’s rituals. “If you play a 45 rpm record of ‘Auld Lang Syne’ backwards at 33 and a third,” says Jerry Collier, a professor of comparative religion, “it actually makes more sense.”