Happy New Year

Happy New Year!

You hear it a lot these days.  These days being those around Christmas, after Christmas and a bit into the new year, which this year is 2019.  It's the thing to say.  It's the greeting of the season.  Some of us may even think about what we're saying.

It's an easy greeting to understand unlike so may greetings we take for granted.  Hello, it that anything more than a sound we make when we see someone or answer the phone.  Or hi, what's that all about.  Farewell, we can see that one wishes another to "fare" "well," may things go well with you.

Ciao, common in Europe, a deviation of "I'm your slave."  Really?  I guess it was a polite thing to say once showing your willingness to serve.  Aloha, it's Hawaiian and it sounds nice, either coming to going.  Adieu and adios, it's a God thing, "to God."  Are you sending me off to God?  Wouldn't "with God" be better?  Good bye or goodbye, another God thing, "God be with you" poorly deviated.

Back to "Happy New Year."  All the words in this greeting are clear, simple and English.  We're wishing for you that the new year will be a happy one for you.  We'll let you define happy but what is a new year.  It's some type of bump in the annual cycle of seasons and circling the sun.  Some time ago some created a way of recording the days of the year which today we call a calendar.  Somehow that calendar started about ten days after the winter solstice.

So the new year is when we get a new calendar and hordes of people think that something new will happen.  Other than a memory of staying up to late, midnight typically, or a party with friends or family, the first day of the new year is the same as the last day of the old year.  Well, for many it's a holiday and they don't have to go to work.

Yes, this has been a post of just rambling with one profound point but then maybe it's similar to the reason we celebrate the changing of a calendar.  Anyhow, I do hope that your next year, starting with the change of the change and a midnight kiss, or starting at this moment whenever that may be, is one in which you can find positive feelings including happiness.  Happy New Year.