My New Year’s Eve posts are generally pretty maudlin. I don’t mean for that to be the case exactly. But I think we all find ourselves feeling a little uncomfortable when we take time to take inventory of the last 365 days.
Just about every culture has its own New Year’s traditions. In Spain, you pop a grape in your mouth at each stroke of midnight. In Puerto Rico, you toss buckets of water out the windows – even better if you used the water to mop your floors. People in The Philippines insist that everything on the New Year’s table must be round, and they even go so far as to wear polka dots to get in the spirit. The Danes apparently have a tradition wherein they jump from the furniture and “into” the New Year. In Scotland and Greece, it’s essential that the first visitor to your home after the New Year must enter right foot first – and come bearing a gift.
I have friends and family who insist on eating sauerkraut, black-eyed peas or cooked cabbage for good luck and prosperity. Just about everyone here pops champagne, sings “Auld Lang Syne” and kisses somebody at the stroke of midnight. I suppose if I had a New Year’s tradition, it would be making a super sugary sherbet punch and dicking around with my TV, trying to find a ball drop livestream that isn’t awful but is free.
We think the tradition of resolutions comes from old religious practices. People would often use the New Year to make promises to their gods about settling up debts and living “better” in the coming year. Reflecting on the passing of time naturally leads to making commitments and holding hope to make changes. We want to course correct, to start something new with a clean slate and a clear direction.
We don’t always succeed. We mean well, but habits are what they are. If change were as simple as saying “I will change,” we’d all live easy. We’d never have conflict unless we wanted to. We’d all get what we wanted and be who we wanted. Personally, I’m trying to course correct for a lot of things right now. And it’s so, so hard to get right.
I’m incredibly blessed to have had so many wonderful things and people in my life this year, so many moments that I wouldn’t change or trade for anything. So much has changed, so much has remained the same, so much has yet to even really come into its fullness.
My hope is that 2023 will be a year of calm, quiet, gentle change, the kind of tender growth we see in early spring.