Tag: New Year

2018 — You’re Goin’ Be A Good Year!

2018

OMG! I’m old enough to remember when 2001 was science fiction, so 2018 is beginning to stretch the limits of my imagination.  When I was a kid, 2018, if it happened at all, was going to be a bleak combination of all the best bits of Logan’s Run, Soylent Green, Death Race 2000 and A Clockwork Orange.  In short, as a know-it-all 20-something, I didn’t think we were actually going to get this far.  However, here we are — and we survived 1984, Y2K and the Mayan Calendar.  Not bad considering that, at various times, half the population was convinced all three of them were going to wipe us out.

Here’s the deal: humans are a resilient species.  Unlike every other mammal on this planet, we have the ability to adapt to whatever difficulties Mother Nature and our own inherent stupidity throw in our path.  Plus, we have the audacity to challenge the awesome power of our unforgiving universe and the skill to bend it to our will.  Again, not bad considering half the population gets its information from Twitter — 140 characters at a time.

The trick is, human beings are the sum of their parts.  For every Kim Jong-un threatening to turn our children into nuclear French fries, there are ten Dutch engineers turning wind into electricity so those same kids won’t choke on industrial waste.  For every Boko Haram, there are ten Nigerian dads taking the early bus so their daughters can go to school.  And for every stupid Trump tweet, there are at least ten Americans, out there somewhere, saying WTF? — because in the entire history of human existence, for every dark slice of yesterday there’s always been a whole new tomorrow.

I lost my after-dinner pessimism somewhere between Maggie Thatcher and the Fall of the Berlin Wall.  And although, these days, it’s soul crushing to watch a snarling pack of self-important middleclass slacktivists systematically dismantling the Enlightenment, I refuse to surrender my optimism.  Saner heads will prevail!  They always have, and I believe they always will.  So, 2018, come ahead!  You’re gonna be a good year: I can feel it.

Hogmanay: Let’s Get Scottish

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Although, lately, it’s become a bit of a drunken bash, Hogmanay is actually a very ancient festival.

What? You’ve never heard of Hogmanay?

Sorry! I tend to forget that most people don’t have the advantage of being born Scottish.

For the uninformed, Hogmanay is basically New Year’s Eve, but, like haggis and hating the English, it has a distinctive Scottish flavour.  You see, for most of Scotland’s history, Christmas was no big deal.  Back in the day, the powers that be in Scotland’s Protestant Church weren’t all that keen on the heathen bits of Christmas (stuff like trees, presents, and mistletoe.) So, rather than muck about, they simply banned it, and for several hundred years, there was no Christmas north of Hadrian’s Wall.  In fact, Christmas, as the rest of the world knows it, only became a holiday in Scotland in 1958!  Instead, the Scots celebrated Hogmanay on December 31st.  The great irony is, of course, Hogmanay is about as pagan as you can get without a human sacrifice.  So much for the wisdom of the Church of Scotland!

As with most modern festivals, though, good luck trying to figure out where Hogmanay came from!  Its origins are a tangled mess of several cultural influences.  First, there is the Gaelic celebration of Yule and the even older winter festival, Samhain.  (Or maybe it’s the other way round?  I can never keep those two straight.)  Either way, these were high holidays on the Celtic calendar for a millennium before Christianity came to Caledonia.  Meanwhile, sometime in the 8th century, marauding Vikings started showing up, battle axe in hand, to add a little rape and pillage to the Scottish shore.  Some of these Norsemen liked the look of the place and took up residence and, no strangers to wild parties, added their traditions to the mix, including a Winter Solstice celebration.  So, by the time Robbie Burns wrote “Auld Lang Syne” (the quintessential New Year’s song) in 1788, Hogmanay was already Scotland’s quintessential winter festival — and had been for 1,000 years.

In contemporary times, Hogmanay is still celebrated as an optimistic look into the future.  Most Scots clear out the clutter of the old year, including getting rid of unused items, old clothes and even breaking off bad relationships and settling debts.  The point is to welcome the new year with a clean slate.  The most vigorously observed custom, though, is “first-footing.”  This is the first person to come through your door in the new year.  Folklore dictates that it should be a tall, dark man.  (In Scotland, short blonde woman, stay home!  I’m not kidding!) And he should bring bread, salt or coal as a gift to the household.  This ensures prosperity and good fortune in the coming year.

Of course, if it’s Scottish, it includes alcohol. Toasting in the New Year is done so enthusiastically — from Gretna Green to the Isle of Skye — that  not only is January 1st a national holiday, but January 2nd, as well.  (Pragmatic people, the Scots!)

So (as the man said) we can raise a cup of kindness to last year, but let’s reserve the next two for the year to come.

Happy New Year, everybody! (wherever you are in the world)

Resolutions Are Relative

resolutionsIt’s the second week of the new year, and that iron resolve we made our New Year’s Resolutions with is showing a little metal fatigue.  Carrot sticks don’t taste as good as Mars Bars.  Three flights of stairs is a long way.  And family get-togethers are actually a pain in the ass.  However, you don’t have to beat yourself up over your lack of will power or drown yourself in a bottomless pool of self loathing.  All you have to do is explain to your Inner Puritan that this is the real world, and in the real world, real things happen.  Let me help.  Here are a few tidbits to tell those holier-than-thou voices inside your head — that’ll shut them up.

 

Chocolate has always been a good friend of mine.  In these troubled times, it would be totally rude if I turned my back on chocolate.

BuzzFeed said that people who swear a lot are more intelligent than ordinary people.  Sounds legit.

Wine is made from grapes, and grapes are fruit, and fruit is healthy — right?  Fruit is healthy!

Exercise? … Extra fries?  I always get those two mixed up.

Screw the French and their irregular verbs.  If they had anything decent to say, they’d say it in English.

One pair of slingbacks won’t kill anybody.  Besides, shoes are a necessity.  Even nuns wear shoes.

If I reorganize the hall closet, I’m going to have to find a place for the golf clubs I bought last year.  But if I find a new place for the golf clubs I bought last year, I’m going to have to move something else.  But I can’t do that unless I get a bigger apartment with more storage.  A bigger apartment with more storage is going to cost me tons of money.  So, if I don’t reorganize the hall closet, I’m going to save tons of money!

Golf is a stupid game.

If I spend all weekend watching The Fall on Netflix, that’s not actually binge-watching; it’s dealing with my procrastination and self discipline problems — especially if I start on Friday immediately after work and finish all three seasons.

And finally, one of my favourites:

But if I don’t go on Facebook every day, all my friends will think I’m mad at them.