Lord knows, we owe a good deal to New Year's Eves past. A Yankelovich poll shows that 75 percent of Americans are going to be at home when the ball drops. The big bashes are half bash-ful. The mega-trippers are staying home. Even The New Republic features a millennium cover of three people asleep on a bench.
Every informal survey says that the in-crowd is truly in for the night.
I have, of course, long been ahead of this trend. Through a massive effort, I stay awake until the very first citizen of Reykjavik has blown his horn. We're too pooped to party. This is particularly handy for single people. It positions you as a Very Important Person, who must sacrifice her own happiness and beat off the requests of endless attractive men in order to save the world or the workplace from a Y2K crash.