Postcard from the Past: Happy New Year
The Jan. 1, 1909 issue of the Newcastle News-Journal editorializes:
Happy New Year! The glad greeting rings out on every hand. A new 12 months have been ushered in with all its mystery of “the things which are to be.”
The newness of the new year is essentially a newness of spirit. A new man will always enjoy the new year.
When another January arrives, it is distinctively the time to slough off the old and to put on the new. There is an old nature to be discarded, and a new spiritual manhood to be assumed.
The trouble with many people, however, is they try to remake and to reform themselves, forgetting few good resolutions – more or less loosely kept – can at best only touch the outside and possess no interior efficacy in the recesses of the spirit.
The new man who is really worthy of the name is the new man in Christ Jesus. Where Jesus is there is always newness of experience, renovation of the moral nature, freshness of hope and a resiliency of elastic joy.
It is not necessary to wait until the first of January in any approaching year to win the wisdom of such a heavenly faith or to experience the benefits of such a spiritual quickening. The promise of God is now, to everyone who believeth.
Each morning may be a resurrection day, each evening a time of golden promise fair, yet not as fading as the sunset. The New Year joy is for all of life, all the time.
It is stimulating and encouraging to feel a brand-new year is offered for happy employment. The old records with their motley pages, some still vacant and others marred and, perhaps, here and there blotted with tears, may be put away, and fresh, unstained pages substituted in their place.
It is helpful to remind oneself those broken resolutions of 1908 may be renewed in 1909, and, what is better, reinforced by more of the prayer and divine grace for want of which the idealizing resolves of the past year were soon forgotten or went so sadly unfulfilled.
The new year means, accordingly, a new hope, a new song, a new endeavor, a new outlook, a new inspiration, a new determination and a new grace – every new thing which is good appears to be possible in its gift.
A hope like this makes any doubter optimistic and gives to existence the character of a life worth living.
A wide chasm seems to intervene between the old and the new. Into its depths should be cast every regret, every halting doubt and every hampering fear which belongs to the past period of our experience and which would burden and hinder our worthy efforts and spiritual progress in the new year.
Let us take up our new duties and meet our fresh opportunities in a free, gladsome and hopeful spirit, knowing God, who has purposed them for our uplift, will give us grace to carry us safely through.
Happy New Year! The message is sent far and near. Let the glad greeting be heard on all sides.
There is a prophecy and a promise in the new year. Even to those who are bent with grief or lonely by reason of bitter bereavement, it is possible and timely to say, though with lowered tone and softened accent, “Happy New Year!”
Every year will be a happy or at least a peaceful one in which the presence of the Lord is realized, which is spent under the protection of his wings, while its duties are discharged in his fear and its responsibilities are borne with the assistance of His grace.
For the Christian, every year should be an improvement on the past and offer its additional opportunities for growing in grace and Christ likeness. The Christian is a convinced and convincing optimist for having a heavenly hope which the world can never give or take away.
He can, in every condition of life, find a basis for an assured happiness expressing itself in the oft-quoted dictum, “The best of all is, ‘God is with us.’”
A New Year’s Prayer
By Davis Cory
God grant that I the new year through
may strive with heart and soul to do
those things which are most good and true.
God grant that I each morning start
my duties with a cheerful heart
and cheerfully perform my part.
To wear a smile all through the day,
to banish thoughts unkind away,
and when my bedtime comes, to pray.
To say my prayers with folded hands
as night comes softly o’er the lands,
to Him, who always understands.
And when the bells on New Year’s dawn
proclaim the bright New Year is born,
and I awake on New Year’s morn.
I pray Him whisper, low and sweet
to help me guide my wayward feet,
lest I forget my prayer to meet.
– Poem from Dec. 27,
1910 Uinta Chieftain
