Enjoy a Happy — and Safe — New Year’s Eve

The end of one year and the start of another provides all of us with an opportunity for reflection. We are a year older — but have we become any wiser?

Alfred Lord Tennyson’s “Ring Out Wild Bells,” which was published in 1850, offers timeless advice about the lessons we hopefully have learned from the past that we can use to guide our future. We quote some of the best-known lines from that poem here:

Ring out the old, ring in the new,

Ring, happy bells, across the snow:

The year is going, let him go;

Ring out the false, ring in the true….

Ring out the feud of rich and poor,

Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,

And ancient forms of party strife;

Ring in the nobler modes of life…

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,

The faithless coldness of the times;

Ring out, ring out thy mournful rhymes,

But ring the fuller minstrel in….

Ring in the love of truth and right,

Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease…

Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;

Ring out the thousand wars of old,

Ring in the thousand years of peace.

As always, we urge all of our readers to ensure that they celebrate the New Year safely and take care that their friends and loved ones do so as well. No one ever died by having a friend take their keys away if they have had too much to drink.

We wish all of our readers a Happy and Healthy 2023.