Equestria hadn’t had a new year for a long time. It had one very old year. The sun’s journey around the earth hadn’t ended, so why should the year? There was a counting of seasons: “Haven’t had a frost like this since the 955th winter,” and so on.

This year Equestria had a new year. Nightmare Moon had imprisoned Princess Celestia, however briefly, and so while one revolution proceeded, the sun's ended.

The current winter, instead of being the thousand-and-first, was the first winter, the second first winter ever. The New Year should have been celebrated as soon as Princess Celestia was restored to the One Bank, but with the normal slow pace of bureaucracy at Canterlot reduced to a snail’s crawl without Twilight Sparkle there to manage and intimidate, the official date for the new year had been delayed and delayed until January 1. No pony was sure how to celebrate a new year. Princess Celestia was the only pony who had ever been at a New Year’s celebration before, and she only spoke of a phoenix’s fire and the pooling water of melted snow around her hoofs.

Twilight didn’t know how to manage a New Year’s celebration either, but that wouldn’t stop her from trying.

“So that’s the plan,” Twilight said. “A history lecture delivered by me, of course, on the nature and meaning of years, the reason and significance of a new one, and then an hour of questions and discussion, followed by an hour of perusing the selected readings I will provide, then we shall all face east and sing the Equestrian anthem, followed by a period of reflective and worshipful silence as we watch the new sun rise. Fillies will have to be in bed before then, of course.”

Her friends, sitting in a semicircle around her, exchanged looks.

“That’s a wonderful plan,” Rarity said, taking lead by the tacit simultaneous communication her friends were capable of. It made Twilight feel left out, although she couldn’t see how they were excluding her. “Allow me to suggest a better one.”

“This is the plan,” Twilight said firmly. “It is educational, tasteful, and quiet.”

“Educational?” Rainbow Dash said. “I thought this was a celebration, not a punishment.”

“Tasteful?” Applejack said. “You hain’t even mentioned apples.”

“Quiet?” Pinkie Pie practically shouted. “Who wants quiet?”

“That’s your plan,” Rarity said. “What about our plans?”

“Suggestions can be placed in the suggestion box,” Twilight indicated Spike, who was sitting to her left, “and the Princess of the New Year Celebration Committee will take them into consideration.”

“But that’s you. By self-appointment!”

Twilight shrugged helplessly.

“Calendars are arbitrary social conventions,” Fluttershy said. “There’s nothing worse or less correct about the ones naturally evolved organisms use.”

“What one do they use?” Twilight asked.

“Critters aren’t a species,” Fluttershy said scathingly. “They could all use different calendars.”

“Fine, what calendar do any of them use?”

“Well, they all use our one, but they have a right not to!”

“I must warn you, Twilight,” Rarity said as they began to stand, “I intend to put up my own decorations.”

“Yeah, we want to throw a real party,” Pinkie Pie said.

“That’s a freedom the princess affords you,” Twilight said stiffly.

“Which princess is that? Her or you?”

“Yes.”

It was New Year's Eve. Twilight stood on a box she had borrowed from the soap stand and looked at the rows of empty chairs. The event was scheduled to begin now, and she had put up fliers everywhere, often next to or over the fliers other ponies had put up for their own New Year's celebrations.

Her design was perfect. After all, she couldn’t see any problems with it, and who was better qualified to know? So when everypony had filled up the New Year Celebration Committee's suggestion box with complaints and suggestions until a weary, aching Spike had quit, she had felt very much like van Gogh might have if he had been constantly harassed by people saying things like, “That’s not what stars look like, you bloody idiot.”

“Welcome, welcome, thanks for coming,” Twilight said to the empty air. “Ahem. A joke: how many princesses does it take to bring a new year?”

Silence.

“Just one.” Not even the crickets were there to chirp. Distantly Twilight heard Pinkie Pie’s voice carried on the wind, “That’s not how jokes work!”

No pony had ever laughed at her jokes before. Considering that there wasn’t anypony here to not laugh, this was progress. “The history of New Year’s Day is an interesting one. Etymologically, a year refers to the creation of a new ant hive….”

"Okay, everypony!" Pinkie Pie said as the moon rose and the lights turned on. Ponyville was wrapped in ribbon and sparkled with a million flames, a sort of reverse sky celebrating the last time they would be looking at the old one. "Everypony parrrtay!"

She was running a party with Rarity, and Rainbow Dash and Applejack had their own competing party on the other side of town. Twilight was off in a corner doing her own thing because it had the best view of the stars far away from the lights and not because it was where anypony actually wanted to be, and Fluttershy was refusing to pick and sitting under the giant crystal ball on a pole they had put up in the center of the town.

Then the party did in fact start, and Pinkie Pie got to work.

“That’s an excellent question,” Twilight said to her imagination, who was an attractive stallion standing near the stage. “In fact, I’ve already got several dates lined up for Hearts and Hooves Day.”

Fluttersy stumbled after Rainbow Dash, one hoof holding the Pegasus's rainbow tail and the other a bottle of apple cider, which she had taken two small sips from, hiccuping as she went. Applejack enjoyed her own drink with Big Mac, watching the revelers dance through the streets.

"Now this is a party," Applejack said, holding up her bottle.

"Eeyup," Big Mac said. The bottles clinked as the first fireworks began to go off.

“Now this is a party,” Twilight said as she leafed through A History of Years, which would soon need a new edition and a second chapter.

"This is so much fun!" Apple Bloom screamed to her friends. The sky was totally dark, the town lit with merry fire. Applejack had let her stay up late tonight, and the fireworks popped in the air like balloons filled with light. It was the greatest night in her life, and soon it would be dawn.

It wasn’t a party if all your friends weren’t there to celebrate

The last of the fireworks exploded in the sky, a sort of Viking funeral for the glittering sea overhead. Pinkie Pie clapped her hoofs. Dancers, drinkers, and the simply delighted followed her in twos and threes down the street, clapping, holding each other, and singing the one song everypony in Equestria knew.

Twilight was singing, her hoof pressed hard enough on her chest to bruise it, her body and face oriented eastward like a compass points north.

Twilight heard behind her a rising, swelling song of hundreds of voices joining in unison and getting closer, and she almost turned and looked.

“You suck at parties,” Pinkie Pie grinned, nudging her. Twilight kept singing, because you didn’t stop singing the Equestrian anthem. And when every other pony stopped, she went on through the second verse, the third and the fourth. Even Princess Celestia didn’t know the words, and had spent many a morning sighing and tapping her hoof impatiently while Twilight went on doing things properly. The memory, the ache of longing, cut her suddenly—

"Hey, look," Pinkie Pie said, her hair smelled like cinnamon and vanilla, and Twilight saw the colors rising over the horizon.

She stopped singing.

Dawn was a blaze of red and gold all around them, and flickering orange and rays shining through golden glowing dust above. The air swelled, flickered, and erupted suddenly with flames, but burned only on the inside like the warmth of good friends and strong drink, as for the second time in history, Philomena set the world on fire.

Author's Notes:

Princess Celestia won't always wake up that early, of course, but she doesn't want to make everypony in Equestria stay up too late.