A New Year's Tradition

December 31, 2023, at home

PHOTO: Pfänder mountain in western Austria, where I proposed marriage to my wonderful wife on April 10, 2005 ... I took this photo of the exact spot where I proposed a few minutes after I proposed. Four countries can be seen from that location: Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, and Germany.

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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 February 1997, I continued the tradition. I have been calling from my various homes in southeastern Florida since I moved south from New Jersey in May 1998. Sadly, Hans passed away in November 2013, so since then I have been calling 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 in the early 1980s. 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.

I call Rita at 6:15 p.m. so that I am not calling during the fireworks. Actually, the last several years, she has not been celebrating at home, so I have had to leave one voice message and then try during the beginning of January so that I can speak with her directly. This year, I once again left a message.

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 February 4, 2006, and we are still married.