“Hope smiles from the threshold of the year to come.”
~ Alfred Lord Tennyson
Yesterday I thought about New Year’s Eve from my childhood. Mom and Dad always dressed up in their finery and went out to celebrate, bringing home hats and noisemakers to the delight of my sister and I the next morning. I wonder, do people still don goofy cardboard hats and shake noisemakers at midnight?
The last time we celebrated New Year’s Eve was the year 2000 when we spent a relatively quiet evening at the home of friends and we had no hats or noisemakers; I can’t even recall with certainty how, or if, we celebrated at midnight for that matter. The attraction of raucous celebration on this night has always eluded me; it’s just another night as far as I’m concerned.
This evening we will gather with a large group for Chinese dinner–a tradition we started enjoying with the same people and at the same establishment years ago before we moved to Washington state in 2007. (We intended to resume joining the group for New Year’s supper after we returned in 2014 but sickness prevented us from attending until this year.) Tonight, as always, we’ll be home long before midnight and 2017 will dawn while we sleep.
Whether you choose to celebrate or not, I wish you a Happy New Year filled with an abundance of joy, peace, love, and hope.
Happy New Year, Linda!
Happy 2017, Karen!