A couple of years ago, on a frozen New Year’s Eve, I watched as a brilliantly lit Hippity Hop ball descended to Earth.
It could have been a budget remake of The Day The Earth Stood Still, minus Keanu Reeves. (See, we’re ahead of the game already!) But this idea sprang from the minds of two good friends who, long ago, made this their own Dick Clark-style tradition. Simply gather the neighborhood for a party. Wrap a perfectly good hopper ball – the kind that are about two feet around with a handle on top – in Christmas lights. Then hoist it into a tree and lower it as the crowd counts down to midnight.
They’ll be the first to tell you it’s weird. Maybe even bizarre. And why not?
After all, when it comes to the New Year, we can use all the joy and laughter we can get.
It’s a strange holiday, to start with. It doesn’t commemorate any notable people or great events – just the passing of an arbitrary line. And it’s an oddly placed line to boot, celebrating the birth of a fresh new year in the cold and darkness.
Maybe Baby New Year is a cat burglar?
Not that it really matters. Even though the holiday’s officially about welcoming the new year in, most of the enthusiasm is usually about throwing the old year out. That seems to have reached a pitch this year, when Old Man 2016 might do well to trade in his scythe for a good pair of running shoes to keep ahead of the angry mob – well, everyone except the Cubs fans, maybe.
Zika. Russia. Creepy clowns. Beloved stars dropping left and right. Ugly election seasons with uglier aftermaths. Someone even let the Oakland Raiders start winning again.
Brrrr.
Even if your personal life was stellar, this was a grinder of a year. Add in a few crises (and many of us had more than a few) and it can seem downright intolerable.
Next year has to be better – right?
Well ….
Remember that arbitrary line in the snow? It’s not a magic barrier. All the raw materials of 2017 are contained in 2016; whether we liked it or loathed it, it’s what we have to build on as a foundation.
The good news, of course, is that we can build. We can’t erase what came before. But as a world, we can produce some unexpected changes in the plot.
Step back a moment to 1986. That was the year of the Challenger explosion, the Chernobyl meltdown, the first confirmations of the Iran-Contra scandal. Someone could be excused for calling it a grim year, maybe even a hopeless one for everyone but John Elway.
Three short years later, the Iron Curtain was tearing and the Berlin Wall was falling.
OK, that’s stark and simplistic. Yes, there were good things in 1986 and bad things in 1989 as well. But that’s part of the point – where will we put our attention? Where will we put our mind? Where will we put our hands and our backs?
No, this year won’t miraculously erase 2016 with all its good and bad. But it’s not condemned to be a clone of it, either. The year will need our vigilance, our diligence, our willingness to examine and challenge and call out evil. But it will also need all the joy, beauty, and hope we can bring to it—not as a futile gesture, but as the genuine start to something better.
Maybe it does make sense to put New Year’s in the cold and dark after all. It makes the light all the easier to see.
So if we truly want to see a Happy New Year, let’s get hopping.
Heck – let’s get hippity-hopping.