New Year’s Eve: A Time Of Transitions and Traditions

I’ve been thinking a great deal recently about transitions.
Life is filled with them, you know.

Some are easy to spot, clearly delineated and even anticipated like graduating from high school, getting married or the arrival of newborn child.

Some are less evident, less visible and maybe not even anticipated, like an illness or the loss of a job.

And some are completely stealthy as they happen so slowly and over such a long period of time as to be nearly imperceptible to the naked eye, like the maturation of a teenager into a full-fledged adult.

Today is New Year’s Eve.  It’s a day practically devoted to transitions as we mark the changing of the guard.  Ancient and weathered, Father Time departs.  Tender and diapered, Baby Time arrives.

We celebrate with the five “F’s.”  Food.  Festivities.  Family.  Friends.  Football.

We mark the occasion with noisemakers, fireworks and the dropping of a ball (New York), a peach (Atlanta), a neon orange (Miami), some bologna (Lebanon, PA) and a MoonPie (Mobile).

We’ll make resolutions about how we’re going to do this or stop doing that (even though statistics show many resolutions will be broken within the first seven days of the New Year and most don’t survive the first month).  And we will sing that song!  You know the one I mean.  It is the one to which absolutely nobody knows all the words let alone its meaning.  Auld Lang Syne.

New Year’s Eve also makes me think about traditions.

In our house, today is about one annual ritual in particular.  I don’t remember when it started, but I think we’ve been doing it for about 2o years.

On the last day of December each year, we make bold predictions for the year ahead.  It’s our way of determining which one of the four of us has the clearest crystal ball.  We foretell things like the end-of-year mileage on Dad’s truck, who will win the Academy Award for Best Actor and who we know that will get engaged or have a baby.  In all, there are about twenty-five categories.  And, let me tell you, it is not easy!

But we do our research, and we make our prognostications.  Then we place them in a sealed envelope that gets stapled to the “December” page of the coming year’s calendar.  The envelope reads: “Do Not Open Until December 31!”  And there it will stay until all of the calendar pages of the New Year are flipped over and we arrive, again, at the last day of the year.

Usually by then we have absolutely no recollection of who predicted what, let alone which team won the Superbowl, the World Series or Lord Stanley’s Cup.  Thank goodness I can go out in the garage and easily get the mileage on my truck!  For most of the categories, we have to do a Google search to get an accurate answer.

So, after dinner tonight, we’ll gather together and open last year’s envelope and laugh out loud at how outrageously inaccurate our assessments were.  Most times we’re lucky if one of us gets even a quarter of them correct.  It a tradition, though, and we look forward to it every year.

What are your traditions?  How do you mark the transition from one year to the next?  Please share in the comments section below.

In the meanwhile, as we stand on the cusp of a brand New Year – a year with 365 blank pages to fill – I wish you good health, much happiness, good fortune and blessings from above.  If you’ve got those, everything else will follow.  And filling up the blank pages will not only be simple, but highly satisfying.