Culture

In a Word... goodbye 2020

Rarely in any of our lives can the phrase happy new year have had such resonance as now

We are into the twilight days of this most unhappy year. That is to be celebrated, with hope in our hearts.

Patsy McGarry's face
Patsy McGarry
Sat Dec 26 2020 - 00:30

I hope you had a lovely Christmas, no matter how different. Because, just as we won't ever forget 2020 no matter how we try, we won't forget Christmas this year either. In his wonderful poem Advent, Patrick Kavanagh wrote that "through a chink too wide there comes in no wonder".

When it comes to quality, less is more. This has been a lesser Christmas for many, whether through the absence of family and friends taken by Covid-19 or prevented by the virus from joining us to mark this special time of year.

For most, this has heightened bonds which we may have taken for granted, even in Christmases past. Though Christmas is always a special time to be among those nearest, absences this season will have made our hearts grow ever fonder.

And so we are into the twilight days of this most unhappy year. That is to be celebrated, with hope in our hearts. We look forward to 2021 and a flurry of vaccines which will liberate us from dread, and restriction on freedoms we enjoyed without thought until 2020.

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We long for those days again, which is hardly peculiar to people on this island, but it bears remembering how US president elect Joe Biden, in speaking of his Irish background, once said we were "the only people in the world who are actually nostalgic about the future".

We are nostalgic for the old freedoms taken from us last spring which we should get back in 2021. Like going to the local for a pint, or dropping in on one another unannounced as it used to be, or flying to the sun or to see sons, daughters, grandchildren, relatives in the UK, US, Australia, New Zealand, and on the continent.

It will be good to see a film in the cinema again or attend a football match, a rock concert, a show, a play, in a stadium or theatre, with hundreds if not thousands of others in the way it used to be. The way we were.

Our emergence from 2020 will be slow but rarely in any of our lives can the phrase happy new year have had such resonance as now.

Happy new year, dear reader, and to all of yours wherever they may be.

Goodbye, from godbwye, 16th century English. Contraction of "God be with ye".

[ inaword@irishtimes.com ]

Joe BidenPatrick Kavanagh