I've always had this problem with Rosh Hashanah. From what I can gather, everyone else celebrates New Year with a big party. Ours seems to be the only culture where everyone stays sober and gets all reflective. Honey and apple and shofar blowing are all very well but a few fireworks wouldn't go amiss either.
Anyway, as any rabbi would tell you (well I think they would, I'm guessing here), Rosh Hashanah is both serious and celebratory - a time of optimism and renewal. So what that we don't get to snog anyone at midnight. But most people are not at their most optimistic right now. Little, irritating things such as the collapse of the international banking system and the collapse of the housing market keep spoiling the mood. However, as the late, great Ian Dury once said, there are always reasons to be cheerful. So here are some reasons to be happy.
This is a boom time for water. After a rainy, cool summer, the reservoirs are well stocked, and with plenty more rain forecast for the autumn and beyond, there is no hosepipe ban. If you can afford the electricity, you can sprinkle your garden to your heart's content.
England recently just won a game of football - an important game at that. Suddenly it looks like we could even be represented at the next World Cup. True, when the time comes, we'll be knocked out on penalties and everyone will be really depressed, but that won't be until 2010, by which time you may even be able to get a mortgage.
The high street is changing for the better. A little while ago, everyone was complaining endlessly about how the chains were crowding out the independents. Very soon, variety will return. As the building societies go mechullah, we will see a whole new breed of charity shops, pound shops and pawnbrokers. How refreshing.
Dinner parties were really tedious until a few months ago. The only subject anyone would talk about was how much more their property was worth than when they bought it. These conversations have completely disappeared. Now, all the talk is of two-for-one deals at Aldi and repossessions - it's a whole new world.
The great news is that if you don't currently own a property, you will very soon be able to afford one. Give it a couple of months, and you will start to see buy-one-get-one-free offers at the those estate agents which are still bothering to open for business.
Perhaps most importantly, this whole credit crunch thing has given people the chance to look at their shallow, materialistic lives and reflect on the fact that the things which make us happy are not the trinkets - those shiny consumer durables, expensive holidays and cars - but other things: a child taking his first steps; dappled sunlight through autumn leaves; a letter from a long-lost friend, and of course, the double-rollover lottery win, which means that while all of you are buying your winter clothes at War on Want, I will be doing Rosh Hashanah Caribbean-style on a very big yacht.
Happy New Year, poor people.