Happy New Year!!

We trade a 2014 calendar this year at New Years for a 2015 calendar. What does that mean to you? Are you hoping for a healthier year? Or for a less hectic year? Is the resolution list longer that it should be? Here is a fun way to usher out the old year and usher in the new one.

Instead of throwing out that 2014 calendar make a new tradition by celebrating the switch. When you take down the 2014 calendar sit with it for a while, look through it see all of your notes, appointments, etc. Talk about how the year went with your family remembering the good times and the not so good times.

Have some hot cider for everyone, and toast the old year, maybe sing “Auld Lang Syne” as a way to say good-bye to the past year. Then if you can do so safely, either in a fireplace or outside in a fire pit, or a grill, along with some Christmas greens, set the 1014 calendar on fire. As the smoke rises let it carry your thanksgivings and petitions to heaven. If burning the calendar isn’t an option then try to think of a way to reverent and affectionate way to say good-bye. Maybe you are able to bury or even tuck into your compost pile so it will become part of the earth as it originally was when it was a tree.

Next make a ceremony of carrying the new calendar across the threshold and into your home. To do this think of a creative place outside to store the new calendar, perhaps the trunk of the car. Welcome the New Year into your home like it is a newfound friend. As part of this ceremony, decorate the calendar with ribbons, or greenery or flowers. Then flip through the new calendar much like you to said good-bye to the old one, check to see when Ash Wednesday is and then Easter. Does your new calendar have the phases of the moon on it? If it does…Easter should be on the 1st Sunday after the 1st full moon after the 1st day of Spring. You could also find everyone’s birthdays and mark them appropriately. What about anniversaries? Is anyone you know getting married in 2015? When is the last day of school?

Then bless this gift of time give to you by the Lord. Ask God, for “peace and prosperity for all the world’ this year. Then hang the calendar in a prominent place and as you do so everyone should shout “hallelujah!
(from Take Me Home Too, ©1997, LTP)