First Night… First What? WHAT THE H-E-DOUBLE HOCKEYSTICKS..?

OK, this is a peeve of mine. It is like the “beginning of the millennia” thing more or less, but more aggravating to me. Sheeple like numbers ending in 0s so instead of celebrating a millennia on the real millennia, the number ending in “1” (2001, in this case), they go bananas over the number ending in a 0. Dumb, mathematically incorrect, but typical of the mass-market commercialized society that pervades North America. So how does this relate to “First Night”?  
 
If it is Tuesday, and it gets dark, it is what? Tuesday NIGHT, correct? When it gets to be midnight it is Wednesday morning. Or still Tuesday Night. Does it become WEDNESDAY night? NO! So, how come, just because it is December 31st, does it become the friggin’ next NIGHT after midnight? It isn’t “First Night”; it is friggin’ LAST night and FIRST morning. First Night is, by ANY definition, the night of January 1st. We go through first morning, first noon, first afternoon, first evening and THEN first night. (In our family, we call New Year’s Day “First Day” as well – it is the first day of the New Year, the last day of our post-solstice family celebration and the first day to enjoy the new year. That is followed by our first dinner and our first night is spent together doing something enjoyable as a family). As if we don’t have enough stupidity in this culture, some beer company comes along and “patents” the name “First Night”, charges 15 bucks to get in, and instead of calling it New Year’s Eve like we have for a bazillion years we end up with a bunch of “First Night” celebrations.  
 
I don’t care who you are… we don’t suspend the days of the week all of a sudden for “special (read: commercial) occasions” and we don’t suddenly call morning night at midnight on Hallowe’en (All Hallow’s EVE) or Christmas Eve (Gee its 12 midnight, it must be Christmas night!). The first minute after midnight, the time is 12:01 AM – ANTE MERIDIEM: Latin meaning BEFORE MIDDAY. I’ve never seen night come before noon.  
 
Well, except maybe in an eclipse. But that isn’t night, and is another rant altogether…