A Single's Holiday: When New Year's Kisses You Off

New Year's Eve seems almost designed to make singles feel somewhat left out. Sure, there are great parties and great friends and great specials on TV, but when the clock strikes midnight you'd better grab someone in your arms and lay one on them - quick! A New Year's with no kiss is considered in some circles bad luck, a tempt of Fate's wrath, and sometimes just downright sad. When it feels like New Year's kisses you off because you're not in a couple, having a single holiday no longer seems fun.

Though in every other respect, the intense, party-driven, late-night scene that is New Year's Eve would seem perfect for singles, the midnight kiss is not. What fun is New Year's when you spend the entire night running around looking for that perfect kiss? Underneath dancing Christmas lights that will be removed tomorrow, your eyes scan the crowd for potential candidates.

And suddenly, the tradition of using mistletoe to coerce kisses seems to make sense.

Being single may not seem like the perfect fit when everyone else is filled with holiday family cheer, but all singles have one advantage in the partylike atmosphere that is New Year's Eve - they're used to it. New Year's Eve parties, while sometimes more formal, sometimes more wild, sometimes more insane, are just dolled up evenings that (when stripped down to bare bones) are a lot like the weekend nights singles experience every week. Drunken revelry is nothing new to singles, who spend plenty of time trolling clubs for kisses every Saturday night.

Finding the same on New Year's can't be that hard...can it? When in doubt, when New Year's kisses you off and seems to say "better luck next year," use the single failsafe that will see you through. Why not lay one on another single friend?

After all, no one said you had to have a romantic New Year's Kiss. A peck on the cheek suffices for married couples on many occasions, so why not some quick lip between friends? Kiss off the tradition of the New Year's Eve kiss instead. When the night is over, the world returns once more to normal.

The holidays will be over, and you can resume your usually fabulous single lifestyle. Why not share a kiss with someone who means something to you on New Year's Eve, rather than grabbing the first warm body that's handy? Chances are, you'll regret a hasty kiss on New Year's much more than you'll regret not getting one at all. When you ring in the year with a few good friends, you absolutely can't go wrong. Kiss off the pain of a single holiday season, and get back to enjoying the party.