Happy New Year! Here we are ready to start through the days of the gift of a new year. Seems not so long ago we were switching over to a new century at 2000 with worries that was going to somehow stop the country because all the computers would have headaches changing 1999 to 2000. We survived that slide into 2000 with hardly a notice. And now here we are at 2023.
How did you celebrate a new year coming your way? Were you out on the town last night and blowing noisemakers and singing “Auld Lang Syne” at midnight? Or were you snug in bed sleeping through the midnight hour with trust that a new year could dawn without you awake to make sure it showed up?
I have seen plenty of New Years come in but never at the parties that get attention in the news. No Times Square celebrating. For many years, I attended Watch Night Services at churches that had Gospel Singings. My husband has been singing in Gospel quartets for over 50 years and on the majority of the New Year’s Days in those years, his group would be singing at one of those Watch Night Services. Singing out the old year and in the new one with songs about the Lord isn’t a bad way to get a new year started.
This year they weren’t singing. The grandkids weren’t visiting as they did when they were younger and their parents were out celebrating their mother’s birthday which is on New Year’s Eve. I’ve watched the Times Square ball drop on television with them a few times. But this year was a quiet time at home. I did hear the clock strike twelve right before I went to sleep.
Have you ever wondered when people started celebrating on New Year’s Eve as they awaited the coming of a new year? You might be surprised to know that started thousands of years ago. The earliest recorded festivities in honor of a new year’s arrival date back some 4,000 years to ancient Babylon. For the Babylonians, the first new moon following the vernal equinox—the day in late March with an equal amount of sunlight and darkness—heralded the start of a new year.
Calendars were changed several times through the centuries until 46 B.C. when the emperor Julius Caesar introduced the Julian calendar which is almost the same as the modern Gregorian calendar that is most used today. He chose January 1 as the first day of the year, partly to honor the month’s namesake: Janus, the Roman god of beginnings, whose two faces allowed him to look back into the past and forward into the future. For centuries Christian leaders chose different dates, usually a date of religious significance, to be the beginning of a new year, but in 1582, Pope Gregory XIII reestablished January 1 as New Year’s Day.
And so, today we start off on a New Year. Maybe you made some New Year’s Resolutions. Our preacher asked us today if we’d made any resolutions, and a sweet little girl who is maybe 8 or 9 said her resolution was to get along better with her big brother. We loved that. I haven’t made any New Year’s resolutions for years, but as I was thinking about this post tonight and looking for a picture to go with it, I decided to resolve to remember to look for the beauty in the world around me. That’s why you have the winter pond up top and this frost flower here.
Do you have a resolution or a goal for the New Year?
End of Year Giveaway Winners
Oh, and before I go, here are the winners of my End of the Year Book Giveaway. I sent the three of them messages this afternoon and have already heard back from them with their book picks. Caryl of Texas chose An Appalachian Summer for her prize. Marlene of Arkansas said she had a hard time choosing but decided on Scent of Lilacs. Susan of South Carolina is ready to ride up into the Appalachian Mountains with Tansy, my bookwoman, and read Along a Storied Trail.
Thank you all for making this giveaway so much fun with your comments. If you’re curious which quote from the last post got the most interest, it was These Healing Hills with 14 followed by An Appalachian Summer with 10. But the others all got some votes too. Thanks for sharing your thoughts about why the quotes grabbed your interest. You all are the best.