Happy New Year!

What can be better than a couple of months that include Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year celebrations, and what’s better all the meals, family gatherings and presents that go with these joyous occasions. You’ll hear “Happy New Year!” for at least a couple of weeks as 2010 gets going. Remember this is also the start of the second decade of the twenty-first century.

The celebration of a new year is, perhaps, the oldest of all holidays, celebrated in Babylon about 4000 years ago. Our calendar month, January, is named for the Roman deity, Janus, often depicted with two faces—one looking forward to the new and the other looking back on the old year.

Traditions are associated with the day include making resolutions to do better in the New Year than we did in the past. Many make resolutions, but like me, few keep them. In modern times, we associate parades like the Tournament of Roses Parade with New Year’s celebration. Babies are often symbols of the New Year with an old, bearded man as the past year. We celebrate the New Year with football games. The ancients may have had other practices like chariot races.

We traditionally celebrate with foods also. We try to encourage money and good luck to stick with us in the New Year by eating greens to signify paper money and black-eyed peas as representing coins. Others insist that these foods ask for good luck more than money in the New Year. In other parts of the world, rice is considered to be the good luck food.

Perhaps the most recognized New Year tradition is singing the song, “Auld Lang Syne” at the stroke of midnight to usher in the New Year. “Auld Lang Syne” means the “old long ago” or the “good old days”. The song helps us remember the past even though we are entering a new year and a new decade.

Traditions help us keep alive, in the human sense, celebrations of what may be possible and help us remember the good things of the past.

Amazing isn’t it. Thanks for the past at Thanksgiving. Celebration of a holy infant at Christmas. Resolutions to do better in the New Year.

Happy New Year!