NPR’s Adrian Ma speaks with author Anne Lamott about ways to begin the new year on a positive and hopeful note.
ADRIAN MA, HOST:
Let’s face it – standing on the precipice of another new year can be daunting. It’s this time when we are forced to take stock of all the stuff that has happened in our lives and in the world. We think about all the things we hope to gain in the new year and all the things that maybe didn’t happen in the last. All of this can be a lot. And on top of that, a ticking clock on New Year’s Eve can add a lot of pressure.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED CROWD: Ten, nine, eight, seven…
MA: It might surprise you that Americans did not actually start to embrace the countdown widely until about the 1970s.
ALEXIS MCCROSSEN: We used to celebrate New Year’s Day – you woke up on January 1. You said happy new year. But by the 20th century, the clock and midnight become especially important.
MA: Alexis McCrossen is a history professor at Southern Methodist University. And she says there may be some grimmer reasons why the idea of a countdown was not always associated with celebration.
MCCROSSEN: In the 1950s, there were atomic bomb tests, and the countdown to the dropping of the bomb and then to its detonation was televised.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Three, two, one, zero.
(SOUNDBITE OF EXPLOSION)
MA: But later on, countdowns would have more positive connotations; you know, counting down to the Apollo moon missions or counting down the top 40 pop hits. And finally, in the ’70s, they caught on as a way to ring out the old and ring in the new.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Five, four, three, two, one and a happy 1979.
MA: And yet McCrossen says that counting down to the new year, it could still bring up angst.
MCCROSSEN: There’s this sort of overwhelming sense that there just isn’t enough time. There’s never enough time.
MA: Not enough time for…
Read the full article here