Ring in the new
Fair fa' your honest, sonsie face,
Great chieftain o' the pudding-race!
Aboon them a' ye tak your place,
Painch, tripe, or thairm:
Weel are ye wordy o'a grace
As lang's my arm …
IT'S HOGMANAY! Tonight they'll be celebrating all the way across the world as 2013 is rung in with vodka/saki/champagne/Guinness/scotch – depending where you are – and fireworks will light up the sky. The celebrations will march across the globe with the time zones.
In Beijing there'll be lasers as well as fireworks. Pyongyang (North Korea) looks to be a bit of a bummer with no celebrations apparently planned – give that one a miss. But in Moscow, Vladivostok and St Petersburg the revellers will be out in spite of sub-zero temperatures. Trafalgar Square, in London, will be jam-packed, proceedings dominated by the giant Christmas tree presented every year by the King of Norway. In Times Square, New York, the crowds will be chanting the count-down to midnight in the oddly named Balldrop ceremony.
In Edinburgh they'll be first-footin' – visiting neighbours as soon as possible after the stroke of midnight, each carrying a bottle of the good stuff. In Glasgow they'll be fightin'. In a place called Stonehaven, Aberdeenshire, they'll be marching up the high street swinging fireballs of sticks, rags and things, wrapped in wire netting, before throwing them in the harbour. (And oddly enough, that's very much what we will be doing tonight in the Street Shelter for the Over-40s. Cultural traditions leap the oceans.)
All over KwaZulu-Natal, rave-ups are planned – some in the Berg, some on the beach, some in the local hostelries. At time of going to press Nkandla had not yet issued its programme of celebrations, but you can be sure they'll have a giant stomp-up – 2012 was a very good year for Nkandla and 2013 will be even better. Who will be the tall, dark stranger who – in the Scots tradition of first-footin' - is especially welcome across the threshold on the stroke of midnight as a bringer of good luck? JZ doesn't quite cut it but Pallo Jordan is a shoo-in for the role.
Yes, Hogmanay. In many parts of the world there's a distinctly Scottish flavour to the New Year celebrations, partly from uisquebach – "the water of life" –which fuels the jollifications, partly from the poetry of Robbie Burns, whose Address To The Haggis (quoted above) and Auld Lang Syne have become a central part of things. So have the bagpipes.
Why do we celebrate? The world economy is still in deep dwang. Parts of the world like the Middle East and the Korean peninsula are on a hare trigger. Syria is a tragic mess. Are we celebrating or wishing for better times, hoping for renewal? And why this particular night of the year?
As the American writer Hamilton Wright Mabie noted a long time ago: "New Year's eve is like every other night; there is no pause in the march of the universe, no breathless moment of silence among created things that the passage of another twelve months may be noted."
Yet, as he also notes: "No man has quite the same thoughts this evening that come with the coming of darkness on other nights."
Quite so. Retrospection, resolution, hope, a fresh start. Good intentions. Enduring friendship. Love.
As the immortal Robbie Burns put it:
So here's my hand, my trusty frier
And gie's the hand o' thine
We'll drink a right guid wulliewaught
For the sake of auld lang syne.
Have fun, stay safe – dinna drive after the guid wulliewaught. And I wish all readers a happy and prosperous New Year.
Wine tip
A NEW Year's Eve tip on getting the best out of good wine.
Open the bottle to allow it to breath. Watch carefully. If there's no sign of breathing, give it mouth-to-mouth.
Keeping it close
OVERHEARD in the Street Shelter for the Over-40s: "Yes, or course I've got a New Year's resolution. But I keep it to myself. I don't want her to be forewarned."
Tailpiece
A New Year's resolution is something that goes in one year and out the other.
Last word
The proper behaviour all through the holiday season is to be drunk. This drunkenness culminates on New Year's Eve, when you get so drunk you kiss the person you're married to. ~PJ O'Rourke
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