When December finally rolls around, and as the 31st creeps closer and closer, most of us take time to step back and reflect. We think back on the year that's passed– our successes and mistakes, victories and losses, changes, battles, transformations. We try to make sense of it all, to make an accounting of events, and see where we come out in the scale of things. We want to know the answer, the outcome, the ending.

Poet William Cullen Bryant examines the past year in “A Song for New Year's Eve”. “Stay yet, my friends, a moment stay–” he begs, asking his friends (and readers) to pause a moment before dashing off the celebrate the new year and take the time to think back and appreciate the old. “Yet one more hour of jest and song” he begs, to remember how the “kindly year … lavished all his store” and how bright and cheerful its days were. Even losses of dear friends lead him only to think of “What pleasant memories we keep / Of all they said and did!” The poem's optimism rings true to the very end, saying a wistful goodbye to the Old Year, and a hope that the new will be as pleasant.

Similarly, in his poem “The Passing of the Year”, Robert W. Service presents someone deep in contemplation on New Year's Eve. With a filled glass, lit pipe, and fire crackling before him, the speaker asks the Old Year to give an accounting of itself before it passes away: “Old Year! upon the State of Time / You stand to bow your last adieu; / … / Yet turn, Old Year, before you go, / And face your audience again.” From the “sphinx-like face” of the Old Year, the speaker finds a variety of answers, swinging from sorrow over loss and betrayal, to joy from prosperity and gain. Just as everyone's year is filled with both highs and lows, so the speaker finds in this moment of truth. Yet despite moments of bitterness, Service's speaker offers the following approbation:

Old Year! a parting word that's true,
For we've been comrades, you and I –
I thank God for each day of you;
There! bless you now! Old Year, good-bye!

Thus we receive a sense of completion at the end, a closing of the circle. Having faced memories of the year, both cheerful and sorrowful, we come to terms with what has passed, and now are ready to release it all into nostalgia and memory, ready to turn a fresh face to the New Year and the exciting new future it holds for us.
A Song for New Year's Eve
The Passing of the Year