Auld Lang Syne – Getting On

I am 67 years of age, I have had more than enough time to earn my ‘Cynical Badge’ and yet, fundamentally I am a believer: fairies, pixies, ghosts, werewolves, dead certs, 100% guarantees, honest politicians, ‘humble’ film stars, karma, parallel universes, the Big Bang, UFO’s, Big Foot, Santa Claus, Donald Trump’s conscience, I have an unrivalled capacity to believe, and at this time of year my openness to the suspension of scepticism is legendary. I do believe in father Christmas, not as the white bearded, ruddy-faced individual who drops a gift off at every house in the world over the period of a single night, but as the reason that the mince pie and glass of whisky I leave out every Christmas Eve is always gone by the morning – and let’s face it, it’s a far more logical thing to believe in than Donald Trump having a conscience.

There is a good will at Christmas that is almost defiant. The soldiers who ceased fighting on the Western Front in order to play football (Germany won by the single goal in extra time) share rations and show one another photographs of their loved ones were not smiled upon by their superiors. It was tolerated, eventually, but definitely time-limited. Anyone unprepared to skewer the man with whom they had shared their duff just hours before could expect to be shot by their own side. The higher echelons were so worried that this spirit of camaraderie between the two armies might persist that they withheld pigs in blankets until the troops could produce a chit affirming that they had robbed at least one child of a parent on Boxing Day. The spirit of Christmas can prevail, but seldom for long in the face of those with something to gain.

In my life, the spirit envelopes me at the beginning of December and lasts for the whole month, generally crashing around my ankles on the dreaded New Year’s Eve with the singing of Auld Lang Syne and the reckless expectation of hugging people whom you wouldn’t touch with a bargepole at any other time of the year. We all fear that we are that person.

So December is all about ignoring the fact that January is on its way and with it the two great portents of mortality: New Year’s Eve and another birthday. New Year’s Eve generally sees me in bed and asleep in time to be woken by the midnight fireworks; New Year’s Day is often the day on which my wife begins to pack Christmas away and January Second is the day on which I become another year older. Death is not something I choose to think about – it is an inevitability – but it does come ever closer along with its sister inescapability, infirmity. Illness is something I do think about, but if I’m honest, in a very abstract sense; never deeply enough to actively delay it. Over these three days, though, my thoughts do turn to the final days, weeks, months, or even years of sub-standard existence and, should I make any resolutions – always broken by the 2^nd – they are always to do with keeping myself on my feet and doing the crossword. (I am aware that elderly people traditionally take up Sudoku for brain exercise, but it is a complete mystery to me. Numbers float in all directions and every grid features two 9s.) I am fortunate enough to be relatively fit and mentally acute – I know that neither are ‘given’ – but always on the lookout for signs of deterioration. Forgetting to put the cat out is a worry, forgetting that we’ve never had one is far more so. I try to enjoy each Christmas as if it is my last which – for all of us – it could possibly be.

Of course, nobody wants their last Christmas to be marred by family feuds, burned turkey or indigestible Brussel sprouts. (To many, Brussel sprouts are always indigestible, but Christmas without them – like Love Actually – is unthinkable) so the pressure is always on to make it a good one. Children embrace it properly and are even prepared to forgive you for being totally lame for anything up to twenty-four hours. The even become suitably competitive for the Christmas Hat Game*. They might even sit and watch a film with the rest of the family and abandon their phones for minutes on end. I suppose it says much about our nation that the most cherished ritual of Christmas is the afternoon nap. It wouldn’t be Christmas if you didn’t sleep through The Kings Speech and wake up with the desperate desire to open the windows.

I am supremely lucky to be part of an extended family that wants to spend time together. We gather, in various formations, as often as we can. Because there are so many of us we tend to drift in and out of one another’s Christmas these days – even if only by Zoom – but Christmas is a day when nobody minds a phone call during dinner or a visit just as the pud is being lit. ‘Come in, pull up a chair and grab a spoon. There’s plenty of everything, and not a single cynic in the house. So, what did Father Christmas bring you?…”

*Everyone wears the paper crown out of the Christmas Cracker. When the first person (hopefully discreetly, but after a couple of snowballs, who can say) takes theirs off, everyone else must follow suit as subtly as possible. The last person left wearing their hat must accept the ridicule from the room as well of the responsibility of being the first person to remove their hat in the next game – and there will be a next game, there always is: it is surprisingly addictive.

I’m never quite certain what it is, exactly, that we are meant to celebrate on New Year’s Eve and who it was, exactly, that got to decide that the first of January should be the day on which we celebrate it. Is it perhaps conceivable that a bunch of no-hope Bronze Age serfs, having hauled numerous huge rectangular boulders across half of this country to Wiltshire, might have eventually realised that the planetary calendar they wished to chart was, itself, somewhat lighter than the giant slabs of quartz they had been dragging about, shouldered their load and said ‘Sod it, we’ll just leave ‘em here. Drop ‘em in some sort of circle lads, so it looks neat, it might be a while before anybody thinks to clear them away.’ And to those who said, ‘But what about the astronomical calendar?’ replied ‘Er, see that big bluish number over there. Well, when the Sun rises in line with that, it’s the start of a new year. A year? Oh, that’s what passes until the next one comes along… Here, have a bowl of fermented something or other and a neat little tray of pig’s entrails to chew on. It will become a tradition.’ Probably not. I don’t know who invented the year but, if I’m honest, if I had to guess, I would say the ancient Chinese or Egyptians – if it had been up to us, it would almost certainly have started at some other time to everybody else.

I can understand how early humans would have been able to work out the yearly cycle from the stars, the moon, the crops, the birds and the bees, and the annual demand for money from the tax man, but how did they decide where one year was to end and another begin? Surely they could have chosen the shortest day, or the longest day or at least something that could be recognised without a calendar: the day that next door gave the kids their annual nitting and bath; the day that the one with the lumps on her chest started mysteriously filling out and craving mammoth again… By whatever means, it has to be clear that the actual choice was an arbitrary one. It could have been any one of the 365.25 days that mark the Earth’s passage around the sun. If you ask me, it would have made a lot more sense to have chosen a day when far fewer people had a hangover.

It is, anyway, a strange thing to celebrate, don’t you think: everything is another year older, another day closer to death, including the Sun, which as far as I understand it¹, is just biding its time until it gets its chance to swallow the Earth during its death throes. It’s a fairly vindictive thing to do, but it seems to be just the way it is with stars… Maybe New Year’s Day is the Sun’s birthday… or God’s, or Time’s – that would make more sense wouldn’t it? That would be a better reason for letting the fireworks off. You wouldn’t feel quite so daft sitting on some dateline beach, waiting for the New Year Sun to rise if you knew that it was its birthday. What could be a better choice for New Year than the birthday of Time itself?

You wouldn’t mind hugging a stranger if you knew it was the anniversary of the almighty’s birth², although, as always, God’s a tricky one. It’s hard to see how he can have a birthday when he’s been around forever. (Ever wondered what he got up to before he decided to create the Universe? You can’t help but thinking that with all that Eternity to mull things over, he might have arranged things in a more logical manner: thought things through a little more. Mind you, if we’re created in his image, then he must be just like us, in which case, it’s a miracle that we’re not in an even bigger mess than we are.) Astronomers would have you believe that they know exactly how old the Sun is – even when, like the rest of us, they can’t work out when the car’s MOT is due – but try asking them for a precise date. To the nearest one million years does not help when you’re trying to book a party at the play barn.

Philosophers say that Time is a manmade construct, well, fair enough I say, but who was this man and what did the rest of us do to wile away the days before he did it? Presumably nobody got older until he sorted that one out. Mind you, you’d have to question how we all got here: a nine month pregnancy could be a very long time indeed if nobody had bothered to invent Time beforehand.
“You’re looking a little bit… erm… rotund these days, Shirley.”
“Yes, I know. I’ve been pregnant now for…”
“‘For’ what?”
“I don’t know. I’ve been pregnant since… Since… Been a funny sort of day hasn’t it?”
“Day?”
It’s almost impossible to imagine a life without Time – mostly because you wouldn’t have the time to do it³. At least it makes some sort of sense for us: if humankind created Time, then it must have a birthday and it is only right that we celebrate it. If we keep it happy, then it might stop slipping away quite so quickly. It is the one thing that none of us wants less of.

And that, of course, is the only real significance of New Year’s Day – as a tangible reminder that Time is drifting away and, if we’re honest, we realise that there is nothing we can do about it, other than light up a cigar, pour a giant glass of single malt and stare up at the stars: there’s nothing like a sense of your own insignificance to set you up for the year ahead. Just tell your family that you love them and stagger on to the horizon…

And a Happy New Year to one and all.

¹Not very

²Terminal embarrassment is really not so bad as long as it occurs on New Year’s Eve

³If you wish to experience eternity, simply watch an entire episode of Casualty in the company of an insurance salesman.

N.B. This piece was originally to be called Auld Lang Syne, until I realised I’d originally used that title in December 2018, so Old Times it became because it means more or less the same thing and, by some miracle, it fits the text. Making sense – something I resolve to do more often in the New Year – I’ll give it a week…

Tag: Auld Lang Syne

The Capacity to Believe

Old Times