Vlogmas 2022: Day 31

December 31, 2022

Vlogmas 2022, Day 31: New Year's Eve/Day Tradition (Dec. 31, 2022)

New Year's Eve/Day Tradition, Dec. 31, 2022

For Day 31 of my Vlogmas 2022, which is also the last day of this month-long event, I thought that I would tell you about a New Year's Eve/Day tradition my father created in the early 1980s.

In the early 1980s, my father and I took a trip to western Austria to visit many of our Austrian cousins, including Hans and his wife Rita. On that trip, we spent New Year's Eve at Hans and Rita's house. When we returned home, my dad started a new tradition where Dad would call Hans on the phone from Dad's house on Long Island, New York, every Dec. 31 at 6 p.m. Eastern Time/U.S., which was 12 a.m./Midnight Austrian Time/Central European Time on Jan. 1. My father wanted to be one of the first people to wish Hans and Rita a Happy New Year.

When my dad sadly passed away in 1997, I continued the tradition. I have been calling from my various homes in southeastern Florida since I moved south from New Jersey in 1998. Sadly, Hans passed away in 2013, so I now call Rita directly. Today, I was able to leave a New Year's greeting for Rita in English and in German on her home answering machine after many attempts.

Since the early 1980s, I have visited my cousins across Austria seven times and have gone skiing in the Austrian Alps with several of them on many of those trips. My father and I once celebrated New Year's Eve at Hans and Rita's house, I think in 1983. On that trip, we were in Austria from December 27 to January 8. Hans and Rita lived on the side of a mountain ~ Rita still lives there ~ in the Austrian province of Vorarlberg, overlooking a small city. I remember the wonderfully subdued feeling as we gently raised our Champagne-filled glasses and quietly spoke the words "Zum Wohl" and "Prost" as the clock struck midnight in their living room. We then went outside onto their patio to watch the fireworks explode below us in arrays of colors. It is my most memorable New Year's Eve celebration.

On April 10, 2005, my wife and I shared Champagne with Hans and Rita in their house with two more Austrian cousins (Blanka, Hans' sister, and Blanka's son Markus) to celebrate our wedding engagement. I had just proposed marriage to my wife on a nearby snowy mountaintop with Hans and Rita just several yards from us.

My wife and I wed in southeastern Florida on Feb. 4, 2006, and we are still married.

Vlogmas is a combination of vlog (video log) and Christmas. It's when YouTubers around the world upload a homemade Christmas video every day onto their YouTube channels throughout the month of December, either until and including Dec. 25 or Dec. 31. That means I will be uploading a new video onto my YouTube channel every day throughout December until and including Dec. 31, 2022, and then posting the links onto Facebook.

Thank you for watching my Vlogmas 2022 videos. I had fun making them.

https://youtu.be/o0w4LTOwhoo