Don't start the new year flying Solo.

When the clock strikes midnight to ring in 2015, what will you hold in your hand? What will you raise and drink from to toast the new year? What will your choice of vessel say about your future? About what you’ll do with the clean slate, the unlimited possibilities, the precious gift of as-yet-unspoiled dreams given to you by each turn of the calendar?

It’s going to be a plastic Solo cup. And that’s a terrible choice.

When you start the year with that dull plastic mini-thud instead of the elegant tinkle of real glass, you declare your intention to endure the next 12 months with the absolute minimum of effort. To hell with any higher aspirations. You just want the cheapest, easiest possible delivery method for a mild jolt of numbing pleasure that fades almost as soon as you feel it. Toasting 2015 with red plastic says “I’ve already started throwing the year away like it’s disposable.”

Or you could take that script and say “Bottoms up”. You could do the opposite. These Bormioli Rocco Toscana champagne flutes aren’t that much more expensive than a sleeve of landfill-bound Solo cups. And they aren’t that much more hassle: you can even put them in the dishwasher.

But they’re real glass. They’re really made by a real, legitimate glassmaker in Italy. They are, in their modest way, special.

Half-assing life is OK most of the time. If we’re talking about some Flag Day kegger at your half-cousin’s trailer, sure, whatever gets the booze to the mouth. But this is the new year, man. The disappointments, the frustrations, the humiliations: 2015 will bring those soon enough. Bothering to use a real champagne flute gives you at least a few pristine moments where you can honestly say “This year, I’m doing things first-class all the way.”