I know more than one person on Facebook who has pronounced, with great intensity and fervor, that they will unfriend and block anyone who has the temerity to suggest that 2021 "couldn't be any worse than 2020." In a classic example of superstition writ large, these individuals not only dread tempting fate themselves, they won't tolerate anyone else doing it either. The Universe, the Powers That Be, God or whatever you want to call it has clearly been in a mood for the past ten months. It's easy to imagine Him/Her/Them/It just waiting for humanity to show that it still hasn't learned a thing. Oh, really? You think? we imagine a vast echoing voice saying, followed by a smug laugh. Just...you...wait...

Things can always be worse, of course. We know that rationally, and we also know that we ourselves have a lot to do with our own fortunes and misfortunes. As it says in Scripture (Hosea 8:7 to be precise), "For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind"--what we sow returns to us all grown up and much stronger, and like cyclones, usually affects far more people than just ourselves.

We know that weather extremes and climate change are caused by what we've done to the planet and the atmosphere (choosing not to believe something doesn't stop it from being true--disbelieve in gravity as hard as you want, you'll still faceplant when you trip over a rock). We know that face masks and quarantining slow down the transmission of respiratory diseases. We know that whatever may lie ahead for us in 2021, if we don't like it, we could have prevented it, or at least prepared for it. Nothing bad ever happens, ever, without warning signs, usually enormous ones. We're just very, very good at disregarding them.

Cultures all over the world and as long as people have had calendars have observed very similar traditions at the beginning of a new year. There are thousands of rituals and customs designed to "get rid of the old" and usher the forgettable aspects of the past year out the door, and thousands of rituals and customs to "ring in the new" with good fortune, good health, prosperity, peace, and harmony.

But this year our New Year's celebrations are muted. We're being asked to stay home, avoid parties, stay masked, not hug, not even sing. No "Auld Lang Syne" for us (some people are relieved about that one). No crowded First Night streets, no fireworks shows--except on streaming video--no pubs and restaurants full of partiers, no midnight smooches.

And something else is different. We're not looking back very much. There are far fewer of the "year-end reviews" that typically monopolize the media in the last couple of weeks of a normal year. Those, I don't miss; I find them rather tedious. But their absence now is telling. 2020 was awful. We don't want to look back at any of it.

All the news now is about the vaccines--how fast they'll be distributed, who gets a vaccination first and who needs to wait. But in the meantime, COVID is surging harder and faster than ever, here in Massachusetts and all over the country. A new strain has arrived here--remember when some of us warned that the more the virus was allowed to spread, the more it would mutate?--which reportedly is twice as transmissable as this one that's already killed nearly 350,000 Americans. Even with the vaccine, the things most severely impacted by the COVID precautions--large events, schools, performing arts, conferences and conventions, sports events, among others--don't expect to be back to their usual procedures anytime much before next fall. Some things might never come back, the way 9/11 permanently changed how we travel by air or monitor public spaces.

But still, I write this on New Year's Eve looking ahead to a future of promise. I look forward to a time when COVID-19 is under control. I look forward to changes for the better in our community and in our country. I still have hope that people can be reasonable and rational, that this era of passionate intensity will evolve into another age of enlightenment and balance. I still hold out hope that justice, equity, compassion and a love of the truth are attainable goals.

I'm a dreamer, what can I say? Or maybe visionary is a better word. We need more of them right now.

I wish all of you a very Happy New Year. Peace, good fortune, health, and wisdom to you all.

Inanna Arthen