Auld Lang Syne - Happy New Year's - Traditions

We celebrated New Year's Day last night by eating, playing games, eating, watching TV and videos, eating, and celebrating with the televised Vancouver and Niagara Falls countdown, and eating. It was great fun. The traditional favorite, Auld Lang Syne, was sung by a woman with a beautiful voice who just sang the same 3 - 5 words over and over and called it done.

So I looked it up on the internet today and found this:

Auld Lang Syne

The song, "Auld Lang Syne," is sung at the stroke of midnight in almost every English- speaking country in the world to bring in the New Year. In spite of the popularity of 'Auld Lang Syne', it has aptly been described as the song that nobody knows. Even in Scotland, hardly a gathering sings it correctly, without some members of the party butchering the words.

Written by Robert Burns in 1741, it was first published in 1796 after Burns' death. "Auld Lang Syne" literally means "old long ago," or simply, "the good old days."

Auld Lang Syne by Robert Burns

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
and never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot
and days of auld lang syne?

For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne,
We'll take a cup o' kindness yet
For auld lang syne

We twa hae run aboot the braes
And pou'd the gowans fine;
we've wander'd mony a weary foot
Sin' auld lang syne

We two hae paidled i' the burn,
Frae mornin' sun till dine;
But seas between us braid hae roar'd
Sin' auld lang syne

And here's a hand, my trusty friend,
And gie's a hand o' thine;
We'll take a cup o' kindness yet
For auld lang syne

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
and never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot
and days of auld lang syne?

For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne,
We'll take a cup o' kindness yet
For auld lang syne

A bit too long maybe, but I like when it's sung as the first two verses above and the three last one. Just my Scottish heritage rearing it's head I guess.

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While I was at it, I looked up the top ten New Year's resolutions year after year. How many of them are yours?

1. Spend more time with Family and Friends
2. Get Fit
3. Lose Weight
4. Quit Smoking
5. Enjoy Life More
6. Quit Drinking
7. Get Out of Debt
8. Learn Something New
9. Help Others
10. Get Organized

Worthy goals to be sure, but if we accomplished them we wouldn't need to put them on the list every year. Maybe we should just retire those 10 and come up with another bunch we can work on.

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When we were a young family busy raising our kids, on New Year's Day we used to sit around and ask each family member what their favorite thing of the past year was, and what they would like to see happen in the new year. They'd make such wishes as "I would like to get Sara toilet trained this year", or "I'd like to move again this year", or "I'd like to get a dog/cat/bird this year", or "I want to go to school with the big kids this year", "I'm going to learn to ride my bike", etc. We'd write them down and review the list every New Year's Day and see how we did. We still have some of those lists someplace. We found them not long ago and had a good laugh and felt all nostalgic reading them.

In 1978 when our fifth child (Mike) was 9 months old and our oldest (Rob) was 6, Rob's wish was that we'd have another baby in 1979. So Lloyd and I, being generous and giving parents, got to work on his request and on December 4, 1979, Mary was born. Luckily that request wasn't made every year or we'd be overrun with kids, more than we were.

When I was a kid, New Year's Day was always the day for taking the tree down and putting all the presents away.

What New Year's traditions do you remember?

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I hope you all have something good to look forward to this year and the ability to learn from the not-so-good that comes your way. It is my firm belief that the good always outweighs the bad so I look forward to pleasant anticipation to the new year.