I like New Year’s because it’s a holiday everyone celebrates. I like to shout out “Happy New Year!” to everyone, not worrying whether they celebrate or not, because they do!  And almost everyone does at least a small thing to mark the event. In my life, for NYE, I have gone to bar parties, celebrated in a cruise ship atrium, brought in the new millennium with my 5 month old at an all-inclusive in Nuevo Vallarta, participated in a progressive neighborhood New Years Eve party, hosted a pre-teen sleep over, sat on the couch and watched my local news hosts get publicly tipsy and canoodle while waiting for the ball to drop. I have prepared and eaten all manner of exotic party food like steak tartare, ceviche and TGIF jalapeno poppers.   I have opened countless bottles of sparkling wine and watched all the Godfathers.  This year I wanted to do a healthy thing and sort of reprise an experience I had in Hawaii where I watched the sunrise and sunset in one day.  I conceived that this year, we could eat whatever Christmas party treats were still in the fridge and watch whatever was on TV but first I wanted to see the sunset on New Years Eve and then the sunrise on New Years Day over Lake Michigan.    The sunset was a bust; first, I realized I did not want to drive to the lake or the beach or anywhere in downtown Chicago at 4 pm on a weekday so I found what I thought would be the perfect location in a vast and empty parking lot with clear views near my house. But the whole day was sleeting, cold and dark and I only had to look out the window to know it was pointless.  Would the sun be out tomorrow?  We got to bed at a decent hour and woke up at 6 am on New Year’s Day to drive the 30 minutes to Chicago’s Adler Planetarium.  Do you ever have the experience that you are getting up at an hour that you think, certainly no one else is awake?  Like when you have an early flight and get to the airport at 4 am and think it is so dark and I am so tired and I didn’t really sleep and then the airport is a bustling and you feed off the energy and forget that it is only 4 am.   That’s what happened at the lake.  First, we drove up the long promontory drive, passing many good parking spots so my husband could go all the way around again because he thought he saw a secret drive. It was a pay parking lot I told him, but no matter. When we got back around, we had to park further away because apparently going to the lake to watch the sunrise on a 15-degree New Years Day morning is the thing to do in Chicago.  A Chinese running club was using a drone to take and retake a group photo cheering in unison every time a new member jogged up.  There were other couples and families bundled against the cold and a morning newsperson with a cameraman. And a shockingly hatless, gloveless man muttering and giggling to himself.  (How did he get here I wondered, it’s at least a mile to any shelter.) It was a party.  We took amazing photos to the east and took amazing photos to the west, the dawn light reflecting on Chicago’s mirrored skyline.  It was spectacular. After a short time, we walked back to the car and drove to the iconic Lou Mitchell’s Loop diner for pancakes and coffee.  It was heavenly.  We chatted and smiled like we were on a date. We gave our waitress an extra good tip then drove home to our warm house, agreeing that we just started a new, New Year’s Day, tradition.