New Year Reflections

Reader Contribution by Arkansas Girl
Published on January 5, 2015
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Now that the New Year is here, I’ll do a little reflecting. Way back when I was a child, New Year’s Day did not have any particular meaning for me. Perhaps it did for my parents and older siblings, but for me, it did not. To me, it was just another day on the calendar that trailed the Christmas holidays.

Sometimes, we had some leftover goodies from the holidays, but more often than not, the candies, fruits and nuts were long gone. Our little baby dolls and the boys’ toys were still in pretty good condition, but the excitement of the holidays had waned once Christmas passed.

There may have been a calendar in our house, but if there was, I do not remember it simply because time and days and weeks and months did not have any particular significance to me. The first day of the year did not mean that much. Christmas was the highlight of my year, and I did not attach much importance to New Year’s Day. Its arrival was more of a mental transition than a physical one. As we would sometimes say, “It’s just more of the same.”

My childhood New Year’s Day was nothing like Christmas. There was nothing really exciting about it. The only way we somewhat livened up the day was if we had leftover fireworks. If we had shot them all up during the holidays, if my dad had some extra change, he’d buy more fireworks so we could celebrate the New Year in style. Sometimes he would “shoot” the old year out and the New Year in … providing he was awake at midnight. Otherwise the day came in without much fanfare.

If the first day of the year fell on a Sunday, it was a church day, but if it fell on any other day of the week, including Saturday, it was a work day – with nothing too exciting about that.

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