rt, while the latter is
like a settlement day with Time, and Time certainly lets you have
nothing off your account. But New Year's Day, except in Scotland,
where, I believe, you are expected to go out and get drunk--always an
easy obligation!--brings with it nothing but another year, and
possesses all the "tonic" quality of novelty, besides the promise of a
much happier and luckier one than the Old Year which has just been
scratched off the calendar. It is like an annual Beginning Again, and
beginning again much better. Besides, New Year's Day seems to be an
anniversary which belongs to you alone, as it were. On Christmas Day
you are expected to do things for other people, and you do (usually
just the things they don't want); while on Birthdays people do things
for you (and you wish to Heaven they'd neglect their duty). But New
Year's Day doesn't belong to anybody but yourself, and you prospect the
future with no reference to anybody whomsoever, and, better still, with
no one likely to refer to you. Oh, the New Leaves you are going to
turn! The blots you are going to erase! The copy-books you are going
to keep spotless! The Big Things you are going to do with what remains
of your life, and the big way you are going to do them! Besides, say
what you will, there comes to you on New Year's Day the very first
breath of Spring. The Old Year is dead, and you kick its corpse down
the limbo of the Past and Done-with the while you plan out the New.
So, looking forward in anticipation, you feel "bucked." You aren't
expected to show "good will to all men" after a previous night's
debauch on turkey, plum-pudding, and sweet champagne. Nobody comes
down to breakfast on New Year's morning and weeps because "Dear Uncle
John" was alive (and an unsociable old bore) "this time last year."
Nobody adds to the day's joy by wondering if they will be "alive next
New Year's Day," nor become quite "huffy" if you cheerfully remark that
they very probably _will_. It doesn't invite the melancholy to become
reminiscent, nor the prophet to assume the mantle of Solomon Eagle.
New Year's Day belongs to nobody but yourself, and what you are going
to make of the 365 days which follow it. You regard the date as a kind
of spiritual Spring Cleaning, and to good housewives there is all the
vigorous promise of a Big Achievement even in buying a pot of paint and
shaking out a duster. And, though Fate usually helps to enliven
Christmas-time by ar