New Year's Eve by Susan Sanderson

2016 is on its way out.  I wonder what 2017 will bring.

There are lots of traditions for New Year’s Eve.  Many campanologists will be busy ringing out the old year and ringing in the new.  In recent years fireworks at midnight have become popular with some people.  I am a lark rather than an owl and usually go to bed early even on New Year’s Eve.  Sometimes the fireworks wake me up, other times I sleep through them.

A bell tower

In my youth it was usual to go to the New Year’s Eve social at the church we attended as a family.  The ballroom and Latin-American dancing classes my sister and I had been sent to (and I had hated, probably being the oldest beginner and one of the worst dancers!) were totally irrelevant to these events.  The dances were either ‘old-time’ (which was different from modern ballroom) or country dances, which we were used to already.  We ended by singing Auld Lang Syne, although those Scottish words meant little to people in the south of England.  The song was (and still is) traditional.

Times change; they always have and they always will. What will change in the New Year, we can only guess.

These holidays mark the change in date from one month to the next and from one year to the next.  The season remains unchanged.  In the Northern Hemisphere it is still winter.  The days are lengthening, although it may become colder than before the shortest day.  In the Southern Hemisphere (or so I have been told!) the reverse is true.  I have no reason to doubt this, although I have not been across the Equator.

New Year’s Eve is a time for looking back and a time for looking forward.  Whether we make any New Year’s resolutions is a matter of choice.  Perhaps we have made unrealistic ones in the past and failed miserably to keep them.  I know there are things I had hoped to achieve in 2016, which I haven’t managed to do.  For example, I have to ask myself what it was that prevented me organising my poems and finding a way of producing my first booklet.  How long will I allow myself to be distracted by other activities?  Can I find a better balance between all the activities I spend time on?

Everyone will have different questions, which they need to consider as we move forward.  New Year is a good time for this, but it is not the only possible time.

"New every morning…" begins a well-known hymn.  Every morning is a new start.

If you happen to be catching up on reading the More than Writers blog long after the holidays, it could be that today is your day for looking back and looking forward.

A wise school teacher wrote in my autograph book: “Look back and give thanks.  Look forward and take courage.”

I pray that, whatever happens in 2017, the writers and readers of this blog will know the peace of God.

Find Susan on Twitter @suesconsideredt