A New Year

Warning:  This is not a funny post.

I've never found New Year to be a very exciting holiday, yet it is becoming one of my favorites.  The actual celebration isn't what I like.  I remember having a lot of appetizer-like foods such as crackers, cheese, chips, pizza rolls, crab rangoons, and shrimp when I was a kid, but since I'm too cheap to buy food like that, we celebrated by drinking hot chocolate this year.  We didn't do the Hokey Pokey or the Bunny Hop, and we didn't set off fireworks.  Instead we watched Minute to Win It and some singers with outrageous hair styles at Times Square.  The reason I like the New Year holiday is that it is a chance to reflect on the past year and look forward to the year to come.  I like the saying, "may this year be better than the last."  No matter what the past, everyone can be hopeful that the next year will be better.  Some things happen that are out of our hands, but in some ways, we can shape the future.  Instead of making resolutions that I will break in a week,  I like to really look at things I want to do (or stop doing) to make me a better person.  I really like the New Year hymns in the hymn book (although we didn't sing them this year).  The first verse of Come, Let Us Anew says,

Come, let us anew our journey pursue,
Roll round with the year,
And never stand still till the Master appear. 
His adorable will let us gladly fulfill, 
And our talents improve
By the patience of hope and the labor of love,
By the patience of hope and the labor of love.

I also like Ring Out, Wild Bells, by Tennyson.  In the LDS hymnbook, only three of the stanzas are set to music, but the entire poem is great.  The poem describes better than I can in prose, the hopes of a new year.

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,

The flying cloud, the frosty light;

The year is dying in the night;

Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,

Ring, happy bells, across the snow:

The year is going, let him go;

Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind,

For those that here we see no more,

Ring out the feud of rich and poor,

Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,

And ancient forms of party strife;

Ring in the nobler modes of life,

With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,

The faithless coldness of the times;

Ring out, ring out thy mournful rhymes,

But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,

The civic slander and the spite;

Ring in the love of truth and right,

Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease,

Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;

Ring out the thousand wars of old,

Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free,

The larger heart, the kindlier hand;

Ring out the darkness of the land,

Ring in the Christ that is to be.

 

We wish you all a happy and hopeful new year.