The Big Ball-Drop

As much time as I’ve been given to do it, I’ve never quite been able to get my head around this New Year thing.

I’m old enough to have been alive when Guy Lombardo was, which will give you a clue as to how long I’ve been around. Even when I was a small child, my mother would let me stay up till midnight New Year’s Eve, and I was allowed one sip of champagne while we heard the all-too-familiar rendition of Auld Lang Syne and watched the Times Square festivities on TV, including the famous dropping ball.

Later on, I would meet one of the early loves of my life at a New Year’s Eve party. Unfortunately, I was not one of hers, which was a familiar pattern for a while. My mom used to say, “Be careful who you’re with on New Year’s Eve, you’ll never forget it!” Well, yeah, you will, but I wasn’t about to forget THAT one.

I was raised Catholic, so New Year’s Day was also a “holy day of obligation,” and we had to go to church in observance of what was then called “the Circumcision of our Lord.” Seems like kind of an odd thing to observe, but Jesus started out as Jew, and this was a ceremonial ritual for male babies in ancient times. Anyway, the rest of the day was about football, of which I wasn’t a fan.

A friend from South Carolina used to invite me to a Hoppin’ John party on New Year’s Day. Hoppin’ John is a peas-and-rice dish – not my favorite either, but it’s a Southern thing, as is politeness, so I pretended to like it.

But what about the Big Picture here? A favorite author of mine once wrote: “Each year I have felt more keenly the unimportance of time and dates...Another year? What of it?..Do we not in a moment sometimes age years through an experience? Do we not in a year sometimes move not a step further than where we were before?” Another author wrote, rather bluntly: “The measurement of life by solar years robs youth and gives ugliness to age.”

Great concepts, except they don’t quite represent how we work. We have a finite lifespan, only given so much, so we’re constantly measuring it and evaluating it, through birthdays, anniversaries, seasons, and if all else fails, the New Year. It’s a time for stock-taking and resolution-making, which are necessities for the wise allocation of the time we’re allotted on this planet.

We often like to think of the New Year as a clean slate, but it’s only partly that. Most of the baggage we carry on 12/31 is still with us on 1/1.  We’d rather not have the bad follow us as the ball drops, but we still like to bring the good stuff along, so it’s the price we pay.

If you’re excited about what’s unfolding in your life, may your dreams come true in the coming year – at least some of them will, and perhaps some you don’t even know you have yet. If 2014 was a slog, well, if you’re reading this, at least there’s a reasonable chance you’ll make it intact into 2015 (if you haven’t already done so). If the good Lord’s willin’ and the crick don’t rise, you’ll be going through this process again almost before you know it, many more times.