Today is not just a day for swapping those Christmas gifts we went through heck and high water to shop for; sitting down to a sumptuous dinner of roast beast, which was probably equally harrowing to shop for; or struggling to remember the words to our favorite carols.
For many of us, it's a day for observing that we're now only a week away from getting our wish: the exit of the year 2016. Borrowing on the term "Brexit" -- a recent official addition to the Oxford English Dictionary -- I call it the spirit of "Yexit."
The "year in review" articles, essays, editorials and videos have already been splayed across news space and cyberspace. And few would disagree that 2016 has been marked by a wealth of violence, political upheaval, plagues and natural disasters around the world and at home, as well as the departures from this earth of a whole lot of our favorite people, famous and local.
"Come on, 2016! Again?" commenters would inevitably post as the latest bit of bad news was announced on social media. Says one dude in the introduction of another dude's 2016-in-perspective YouTube video: "If we could erase 2016 off the calendar, it would be perfectly good with me."
Yes, we appeared to get hit with extra doses of yuckiness in 2016 ... and not to be Debbie Downer, but there is still a week left. No doubt, 2017 will be rung in with more than a fair bit of glassy-eyed, desperation-infused enthusiasm when the clock strikes midnight.
But truth be told, this ritual won't be that different from the rituals carried out at midnight of prior years: saying good riddance to the old year because it was so rough, and pinning all our hopes on the new year. Along with repeating that "new year, new me" mantra, we'll fervently hope that hardships and hassles that have long dogged us will finally be turned around.
After going through this ritual myself for years -- only to find many a new year bringing with it the old troubles and introducing a fair amount of new ones -- I've decided to take my changing-of-the-year cues from the dude whose YouTube video I mentioned earlier.
So often it's the people we feel we have little in common with who bless us the most. This particular dude is a heavy-metal hip-hop artist who calls himself "Knothead." Knothead shows a wealth of wisdom in his expletive-ridden commentary on 2016. "We've gotta make our own good news," he says matter-of-factly. "You're not gonna hear any good [er, doggone] news on the news. Good news doesn't ... make money. There's no money in '[Stuff] is ... wonderful and we're all going to be OK.' ... That's the way it is. And that's the way it's gonna be. So we gotta make our own good news."
After giving thanks for several good things in his life -- keeping his job, having two healthy children, his wife finishing her studies -- Knothead admonishes viewers to "focus on what's going good for you ... What do you have that you can build on for 2017?"
Whew. OK. Well, any of us who live to see 2017 can focus on the one most obvious good thing: our remaining existence. I echo the words of one Facebook friend: "It has been some kinda year, but, thank God, we made it!" Then we can focus on and be thankful for the other good stuff.
The best thing we can build on is any desire we have to do our part to make a bad world not so bad. We can look at the new year not primarily for what we hope to get out of it, but what we hope to put into it: how we can make the new year better for others. How we can be part of the solution and not part of the problem. How we can, to borrow the words from a compelling sermon in the Good Book, strive harder to be salt and light to somebody else, no matter what crazy things may be happening in our own lives. Not only will those things get our minds off our own hassles, but we'll be planting the seeds for our own eventual harvest.
Yes, it will be somewhat of a relief to say goodbye to this year. No, there's no guarantee that 2017 will treat us any better. But who knows what good things await us if we resolve to treat it well.
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Style on 12/25/2016