The Ultimate New Year’s Eve Watch: 2022

Should auld acquaintance be forgot, and never brought to mind? 

Should auld acquaintance be forgot, and auld lang syne?

We all know the words “auld lang syne.”  Now, none of us actually know what they mean — aye mate, it’s Scottish.  Like, really old Scottish.  When it comes to whiskey, that’s a great thing, but in language, not as much.  Still, we try to unpack it every year in a complicated game of generational telephone.

To spare you the deep dive: the phrase, roughly translated as “old long since” or “old times sake,” originated in 1700’s Scottish poetry from an old Scots-language folk song, was incorporated into classical music composition, eventually found its way into Guy Lombardo’s New Years Eve television special of the 1940s, and became memorialized in Hollywood canon with It’s a Wonderful Life right up to When Harry Met Sally.

You’ll notice there’s always a bit of conflicted sentiment around “auld lang syne.”  Even in the movies, you have George Bailey on the brink of bankruptcy before he can become the wealthiest man in Bedford Falls, and Sally returns Harry’s profession of love with, “I hate you.  I really hate you.”

So any ultimate watch for the occasion should somehow balance that to-and-fro of tugging on heartstrings whilst wiping away tears.  But more on that later.

First, the simple criteria: gold!  On New Year’s Eve, we’re probably talking dressy gold.  For the added sentiment, you could opt for a vintage gold watch, like this early 1900s Waltham converted size 0 pocket watch, that practically sprays Champagne off the dial.

Or, to emphasize the midnight countdown, you could rock the red 12 — like those found on WWI trench watches with converted hunter movements, or in modern renditions like this handsome railway edition from Origin Watch Co.

When it comes to the second criterion, nostalgia, one brand immediately comes to mind: Timex.  It may have been your first watch, like a Mickey Mouse or other character watch, that originated with Timex’s precursor Ingersoll in the 1930s.

Or maybe it was the Timex Indiglo — for many of us, the first time a watch was more than just for telling time, but also a glow-in-the-dark tool for braving the night.  It might be overlooked that Timex introduced this new tech via their Ironman line four years before any other company would catch pace.

Okay, so to recap criteria: we’ve got a dressy gold watch that conveys a sense of nostalgia, likely a Timex.  Anything else?

Well, there’s a final proposition: that it’s Scottish.  Hear me out.

First, most of the English-speaking world associates New Year’s Eve with the Scottish phrase “auld lang syne.”  So there’s that.  Second, Scotland may celebrate the event better than anyone.  Three straight days of so much torch lighting, first-footing, and steak pie eating that it bears its own name, Hogmanay.

If we focus only on Scottish brands, there’s a host of micros that are easily worthy of a toast: like the recently launched Clemence Photic Diver, paired quite nicely with a dram of whiskey.

For a dressier look, there’s fellow Scotsman AnOrdain, with their first-in-class enameled dials that feel like a celebration unto themselves.

But is there one watch that ties it all together: gold, mixed nostalgia, and Scottish?

For that, we turn to Dundee, Scotland, in 1946.  Timex, at the time the most famous watch brand in the United States, had just opened two new factories in Scotland: the Milton factory to produce the parts and the Camperdown factory to assemble those parts into watches that “take a licking and keep on ticking.”

And assemble they did.  By the 1960s, Timex had become one of the largest and most popular companies in Dundee — employing 6,000 workers and fostering a unique culture as a “city within a city.”

For nearly 50 years, the Camperdown factory, comprised of 80% women, garnered a reputation for producing some of the finest watches in the Timex line.  When mechanical watches gave way to digital products, this same workforce quickly adapted to the delicate components of cameras and computers.  Locals hold that these highly skilled women “took a factory and turned it into a Dundee institution.”

Yet by 1993, the Camperdown factory had permanently closed following a bitter labor dispute, the worse the United Kingdom has witnessed in 30 years.  And now, in retrospect, the closure of the Timex Dundee factory looks like a closure of an entire era, a punctuation mark dividing pre- and post-large-scale artisanal labor.

Still, there was a time of Camelot.

Not just for Timex and the brave women of Dundee — but for craftsmanship, workplace comrade, and the overflow of regional pride seeping into local products.  You can still find Timex watches of the Dundee era — look for “Great Britain” where the usual model number would be — and when you hold them up to your ear, the mechanical heartbeat ticks a little louder.

So this New Year’s Eve, as we stare down another wave of labor replacement (ChatGPT could have written this in about 30 seconds), let’s raise a glass to those things that bring us humans, together.  The local brands who meet customers for beers, the holiday gift that will never be sold, and that moment when we all stop to watch the clock… to celebrate who’s standing near.

Anyway, it’s about old friends.