Happy New Year, the hard-luck holiday. It was ten years ago this week that I was riding around Washington, DC in a crowded car and asked my fellow travelers to share their favorite memories of past New Year celebrations. My request was followed by several minutes during which the only sound was the clatter of the car’s undercarriage as we careened in and out of potholes on Interstate 395. Finally, someone remarked he couldn’t ever remember enjoying a New Year’s celebration. The rest of the car quickly agreed and the subject was changed to something more palatable.
Arriving so soon after Christmas is something of a curse for New Year’s, the little stepsister of the winter holidays. After all the driving and the flying and the visiting that attends Christmas, no one seems to have the energy to go rip roaring off on New Year’s. Or maybe that’s just me, getting old and crotchety.
New Year’s is also something of a floating feast. Jewish New Year is in autumn, Iranian New Year at vernal equinox and Chinese New Year will be in another five or six weeks. Two weeks ago, I was whinging about the lack of news on the democracy situation in Hong Kong. Now the newspapers are filled with stories, not about democracy, but about the slaughter of Gallus domestici, for fear of a virus. For your information, 1998 in the Chinese calendar will be the year of the tiger. It will definitely not be the year of the chicken.
Perhaps the reason so many of us have such a difficult time with the New Year’s holiday is the nature of the holiday itself. The turning of the year is a moment out of time, it seems to belong neither to the old year passing away nor to the new one so recently commenced. Some people have traditions to which they adhere on New Year’s – my father eats pickled herring – but to me, the very nature of New Year’s defies tradition. Christmas is Christmas, it is the same holiday year after year, but every New Year is different, it is a box full of future thrust into our hands before we are quite ready to receive it.
New Year’s is a difficult holiday because it is different for each of us. Some people are glad to have gotten rid of 1997, others are more wistful and wonder when again they will see a year that treats them as well.
I think I enjoyed New Year’s most when I was a teenager. I could foresee the future to some extent in those days. Each New Year I would think: “This is the year I get to drive,” or “This is the year I go to college.”
My life is no longer that predictable and what 1998 will bring is still a mystery. In that sense, I think New Year’s is the post-modern holiday because it is an equivocal holiday carrying the freight of uncertainty with which our current world is so charged.
So on this New Year’s Day, I invite you to join with me in celebrating the arrival of events we cannot foretell or control, another year to test our faith, our courage and our compassion.
The Hard Luck Holiday
Happy New Year, the hard-luck holiday. It was ten years ago this week that I was riding around Washington, DC in a crowded car and asked my fellow travelers to share their favorite memories of past New Year celebrations. My request was followed by several minutes during which the only sound was the clatter of the car’s undercarriage as we careened in and out of potholes on Interstate 395. Finally, someone remarked he couldn’t ever remember enjoying a New Year’s celebration. The rest of the car quickly agreed and the subject was changed to something more palatable.
Arriving so soon after Christmas is something of a curse for New Year’s, the little stepsister of the winter holidays. After all the driving and the flying and the visiting that attends Christmas, no one seems to have the energy to go rip roaring off on New Year’s. Or maybe that’s just me, getting old and crotchety.
New Year’s is also something of a floating feast. Jewish New Year is in autumn, Iranian New Year at vernal equinox and Chinese New Year will be in another five or six weeks. Two weeks ago, I was whinging about the lack of news on the democracy situation in Hong Kong. Now the newspapers are filled with stories, not about democracy, but about the slaughter of Gallus domestici, for fear of a virus. For your information, 1998 in the Chinese calendar will be the year of the tiger. It will definitely not be the year of the chicken.
Perhaps the reason so many of us have such a difficult time with the New Year’s holiday is the nature of the holiday itself. The turning of the year is a moment out of time, it seems to belong neither to the old year passing away nor to the new one so recently commenced. Some people have traditions to which they adhere on New Year’s – my father eats pickled herring – but to me, the very nature of New Year’s defies tradition. Christmas is Christmas, it is the same holiday year after year, but every New Year is different, it is a box full of future thrust into our hands before we are quite ready to receive it.
New Year’s is a difficult holiday because it is different for each of us. Some people are glad to have gotten rid of 1997, others are more wistful and wonder when again they will see a year that treats them as well.
I think I enjoyed New Year’s most when I was a teenager. I could foresee the future to some extent in those days. Each New Year I would think: “This is the year I get to drive,” or “This is the year I go to college.”
My life is no longer that predictable and what 1998 will bring is still a mystery. In that sense, I think New Year’s is the post-modern holiday because it is an equivocal holiday carrying the freight of uncertainty with which our current world is so charged.
So on this New Year’s Day, I invite you to join with me in celebrating the arrival of events we cannot foretell or control, another year to test our faith, our courage and our compassion.