The Racket at Midnight

The television is on in the living room, volume low, because the countdown has not started yet and nobody wants to hear the commercials. The December dark presses flat against the window; the neighbor's porch light is a small yellow square in it. In the kitchen someone is covering the last of the snacks with foil. The clock on the stove says a quarter to twelve.

The people on the screen are packed together in the cold of the city, breath fogging, paper hats snatching in the wind. They have traveled a long way to stand in the cold and be counted. The people in the living room have traveled the length of the house, from the kitchen to the couch, and they are wearing socks.

The program has been on for hours: the same bright corner of the city, the crowd swaying, the hosts in their heavy coats reminding everyone how cold it is there. It is a December tradition that asks very little. Staying awake, staying home, watching a crowd whose December is colder than the living room's.

Earlier in the day the house had finished the month's last errands — the recycling bin full of wrapping paper, the last of the holiday cookies gone at breakfast. By nine o'clock the evening had narrowed to the couch. The television glowed. The coffee table held a bowl of pretzels and a plate of the good cheese, saved for tonight.

The countdown on the television

December is the month of lists and errands, the dark at five o'clock, the lights strung along the rooflines of the neighborhood. But on the last night the lists are done and the errands are over, and one square remains on the calendar. The television has been on all evening — not for the shows, which are reruns, but for the promise of the hour ahead. Around eleven the broadcast moves to the city, where the year is about to end.

The crowd on the screen sings along to songs that do not travel well through the living-room speakers. The hosts count down the minutes with the forced cheer of people who have been standing in the cold since sundown. The people at home watch the crowd shiver and feel, comfortably, the warmth of their own houses. Someone gets up to make more cocoa. Someone checks the back door to make sure the dogs will not bolt at midnight, when the banging begins.

The last ten minutes have a particular quality. Conversation in the room fades. The snacks are picked over. The clock on the screen and the clock in the kitchen disagree by a few minutes, and there is a short negotiation about which one is right. Then the year on the screen changes to a number nobody has written yet, and the broadcast begins its countdown.

Ten. Nine. Eight. It is the only hour of the year when counting aloud is a household event, when the whole street is counting along — each house separately, all of them together.

The pots and pans on the porch

At zero, the front door opens.

This is the part of the evening that has no announcer. The back door opens too. People step out into the December air wearing house shoes and jackets thrown over pajamas. In their hands they carry what the kitchen could spare: a pot and a wooden spoon, a lid in each hand, a pie tin. For one minute the street is all percussion.

The cold hits bare arms. The porch boards creak. The banging is fierce and unskilled — the sound a four-year-old could make, and often does. It is not music. It is noise raised on purpose, the oldest kind of celebration, the kind that says the dark month is turning and it will not go unnoticed. The song on the television follows them out, thin and distant, the crowd singing about old acquaintance through the open door.

The dog barks. The neighbor across the street answers with a broom handle against a trash can. A car horn a few streets over gives in to the same temptation. The street is a chain of small explosions, each house doing its part for a minute or less, and then the cold begins to win.

The pots are carried back inside. The door closes on the cold. The television is still showing the crowd in the city, still cheering, and the people who were just outside stand in the warm kitchen laughing at how cold their hands are. The racket did not last a minute. But it was made, and the new year was greeted the way the month requires: in the open air, at midnight, with whatever made noise.

Around half past twelve the house settles again. The television goes off, not because the program is over but because nobody is watching. The doors are checked, the dog let out one last time into the dark. The porch is empty, the pots back in the kitchen, and the street is as quiet as it has been since before the racket.

For all of December, the tradition is doing things right — the right bird, the right wrapping, the right gift. New Year's Eve at home is the one holiday with nothing to it but staying awake. The countdown on the television is the signal. The pots and pans are the answer. And then the couch, the blankets, the quiet surprise that the new year has arrived and the house looks exactly the same, and the last bites of a snack that has sat out since nine.