New Year's Eve gives us the opportunity to both look forward to the future while reflecting back on the past. You can make this year's party a real "blast from the past" with retrospective elements that celebrate the best and most luxurious items of the last century. Create an elegant evening that toasts the wonderful elements of style that evolved in our progress toward the 21st century.

Set the stage by asking your guests to come dressed in formal attire from their favorite decade of the twentieth century. For extra fun, ask them to bring along pictures of themselves as babies and children. Post all the pictures on a board, and let everyone have fun trying to match people with their pictures.

Create a sense of history and celebrate the last century through the creative use of timelines throughout your party. Here are several ideas for fun timelines for your party:

• Create a tape or CD of party music from each decade. If possible, sequence one song from each decade after another and continue that way throughout the CD.
• Use model cars to make a timeline of American automobiles of the last century.
• Hang film posters of the best movie winners at the Academy Awards. Or hang posters that represent the different art styles that progressed through the last century.
• Wrap a length of continuous feed printer paper around a room, and write evenly spaced markings for each decade on it. Provide your guests with markers and ask them to create a timeline of the historical events they consider most significant, both public and private.
• Set up your bar on a long table and select a cocktail from each decade. Set up a station with ingredients for each cocktail and write the name, recipe and decade of each cocktail on a card and place it in front of each set of ingredients.

You could prepare a menu with a recipe representative of the trends from each decade, but I think ten courses are a bit too much food to prepare or eat. I prefer to create a menu with luxurious recipes signifying some of the important food trends of the last ten decades.

A Blast from the Past New Year's Eve Menu

Oysters Rockefeller - This recipe, created right after the turn of the century, celebrates the optimism and confidence the U.S. was experiencing during that early period.

Vichyssoise - You must include a recipe from Julia Child, who almost single-handedly changed the way Americans cooked, and has remained one of our most beloved celebrity chefs of all time.

Steak Gaucho-Style with Argentinian Chimichurri Sauce - During the last decade of the 20th century into the first of this one, Latin cuisine has been one of the up and coming stars. This recipe from the Surreal Gourmet on Food Network showcases this influence.

Flourless Chocolate Cake - The ubiquitous, decadent dessert of the latter portion of the century is a perfect finale to this decadent meal.

Champagne, champagne, champagne.