Grace and peace and auld lang syne

​I have mixed feelings about Christmas carols.  Not the church hymns, but the great variety of the seasonal music we begin to hear everywhere sometime in October or November.  Some years, walking into a retail store and hearing them or listening over the radio to the stations that play Christmas music 24 hours a day is something I really look forward to. 
And, some years, the incessant holiday enthusiasm is just more than I can take. 
​I don’t know why. 

I suspect, however, that one reason for both my affection for them, as well as my apathy, is my relationship with the past.  Some years, I look forward to the old songs and to rekindling my memories of growing up in a home where angels were heralding and the bells were jingling, and the house smelled of a freshly cut Frasier fir.  And some years, all those old carols just seem to fall flat. Most of us have a complicated relationship with our past.  It is a mixed blessing.  Some memories are good and spirit-lifting.  Others are not so good. 

By the time you read this, your live Christmas tree may be on the curb, your artificial tree may be back in the attic.  Advent and Christmas seem to come and go like a blur.  At this point you also may have ushered the old year out and toasted the New Year in and, you may have already gotten the hang of writing 2026 for the year instead of 2025. 
 
The song we traditionally sing at the chime of the New Year is one that invites us to consider the relationship between the past, present, and future.  With the very first line, it raises the question of whether we should forget about the past.  Then, over the course of several more verses, it does not fully answer the question, but it provides an entrancing invitation for us to consider the richness of life and living. 
 
Our memories of the past are complicated.  But all of them offer themselves up to us like suffering servants, inviting us to take from them the experience, wisdom, and insight we need for the days ahead.  I hope that is what this New Year is bringing to you.
 
Grace and peace and auld lang syne,
Morgan

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