So This is the New Year…And I Don’t Feel Any Different

I’ve never really liked New Year’s Eve, and this past one was the second worst I’ve ever had. I flew from California to Boston on the 31st and landed with a splitting headache and some real stomach discomfort. I got to my apartment at about 10:30, crawled into my bed and didn’t move until about 12:30, when I turned off the light and fell asleep. Only one of the twenty-six New Year’s Eves that I’ve celebrated has been quite as bad as that, but I still don’t like it. Usually on New Year’s Eve, people get all excited and talk about new beginnings and blank slates and stay up until midnight and watch the ball drop and sing “Old Lang Syne” if they can remember all of the words.

Well, every year, I stay up and watch the ball drop and go to bed and wake up the next day and…well, life hasn’t changed much. I have to remember to write the date as ’10 now instead of ’09, which I will consistently forget to do until about June, but other than that, I’m in pretty much the same situation I was in on December 31st: my student debt hasn’t gone away, I still don’t have a job, and this coming semester of graduate school is looking to be even worse than the last one.

So what’s with all the talk about new beginnings and blank slates?

I was thinking about that in church yesterday and had an interesting thought. The New Year doesn’t give anyone a blank slate. Yes, it’s fun to go to a party and to watch a ball drop as everyone else in the world is watching that same ball drop (unless they happen to live in a different time zone as you do, then you’re watching it one or more hours before or after them) but you have to admit that New Year’s is pretty meaningless. It’s an excuse to party and (if you’re not Mormon) drink till you pass out. That’s it.

What really provides a blank slate is Jesus Christ. We all make mistakes. We say something we don’t mean, or mean but don’t intend to say that hurts someone else. We neglect to go out of our way to offer help that someone could probably use, but we’re not sure and we wouldn’t want to offend them by offering our help. We take our loved ones for granted, we take what isn’t ours, we take offense where none is intended. All of us do things we wish we hadn’t. All of us sin, and that sin weighs us down. I know that it’s not popular in our modern world to talk about sin, but it’s real and ignoring it won’t make it go away. A New Year won’t make it go away either.

The Gospel of Jesus Christ provides lots of new beginnings. One almost every week, in fact. When we are baptized, we are washed clean of all our past sins. We come out of the water completely clean. After that, we got to church each week and partake of the Sacrament (the name we Mormons use for what other churches call the Eucharist or Holy Supper). If we are repentant as we eat of the bread and water, we renew our baptism and are clean again. We have a blank slate. And we can resolve then and there that we’ll be a little better in the coming week.

A real blank slate is not something that comes with the changing of a calendar. It’s not something you celebrate with late night parties, confetti and a giant ball. Don’t get me wrong. Next December 31st, I don’t want to be lying in bed. I want to be among good company and eating good food. Even more, I want to have a lovely lady that I can kiss to start 2011. But that’s just the day that I’ll have to start writing the date twice every time I sign something. My new beginning I celebrate quietly every Sunday.