The Evening Star FRIDAY, DECEMBER 31, 1920.

Evening Star, Issue 17548, 31 December 1920, Page 6

The Evening Star FRIDAY, DECEMBER 31, 1920.

It cannot be said to belong to the rational nature of man that New Year's Ewe, he should make the beginning of a new calendar year a reason for rejoicing. The world did not begin on January 1, so far as anybody knows. If it were not for convenience and old custom, the year might as well begin on any other date. If we regard each moment as the "confluence of two eternities," which it truly is, we shall find no cause for honoring any one day of the twelve months, upon purely temporal grounds, more than another. And if we accept as fundamental and inevitable the division of our time which makes the year begin on January 1, there would still seem to be very little cause, from the viewpoint of pure reason, why humanity should rejoice, as it has always done, to see the last of a departing year, and give such fervent welcome to its' successor. The unhappiest must have had some kindness from the. year that is gone. We might try to feel for it a. little gratitude. Mere decency would seem to require that we should not push an old friend, feeble and expiring, Tudely, and as it were with feelings of exultation, down the darkening slope. The New Year- may be better to us, but when we hail it with effusive joy it is not the way we are used to treat unknowns. Mankind .is most irrational in its conduct at this season, if we regard it as the mere turning-point of the year. But it is most human, and that is a better thing than to be solely rational. The indomitable hopefulness of man is seen in-his unfailing conviction that the New Year, of which he can know nothing, must be better than the last. Perhaps there was at one time, when his mind was simpler than it is to-day, a little artfulness in his reception of it. Friends gave gifts to each other at New Year time because, it has been suggested, the idea was present to them that its course would be in keeping with its first appearances, which must be shaped propitiously. They not only gave; they also demanded gifts. An idea of propitiation, an artless concern for making their court good, may have been involved in .the demonstrative rejoicings over the New Year, the sovereign soon,to exercise his rule. No NewYear is so fortunate that' we are not glad to see him in his turn go, yet the same hopes are felt for each newcomer. The indomitable spirit ie 6howu also in the

resolutions that are .annually renewed, though to think of how they were last kept can give few much joy. Banish the thought! We will do better, beyond question better, in the year that begins. As a mere observance of a time division that is chiefly artificial, the celebrations lof New Year might not have maintained i the importance they have done if they ,had not been for centuries bound up with the Christmas festivities, of which they formed a natural continuation. "Our New Year's Day, a chief part of Christmas," is how the Puritan Prynne describes the later festival, . hating both alike in his reformer's zeal. The very name of Hogmanay has been traced to the French words "au gui menez" ("lead in to the mistletoe"), though some doubts must be felt about this derivation. The northern divines can hardly have acknowledged it when they allowed Hogmanay rites to pass ivhile opposing those o£ Christmas as "mere relics of paganism and idolatry." A good deal of pagan ceremonial, intended to be adapted and refined, did underlie the observance of both festivals. Those keep the New Year now too much in the manner of barbarians who salute it, not in the benign mood which the hallowing bells should teach, but with din and disorder like the frenzy of tom-toms with -which some South African tribes receive the stranger, uncertain whether they mean to welcome him or to drive him away. , The New Year should not be treated so. t He is only a child. If the method derives, from some far back idea of driving evil spirits from his path it is not required. Let us have full faith in him. Our hopes of all his many predecessors never have been so disappointed but what they have been constantly renewed. Cast in some diviner mould, -May the new cycle shame the old. It is in our own power to make it do so.