An old friend of mine, pretty much of the same vintage, sent me an email suggesting that the words of Auld Lang Syne (roughly translated as meaning “for old times’ sake”) might be an appropriate topic for a column at New Year’s.

I will give it a try.

Most of the research I have done attributes the song to the Scottish poet, Robert Burns in 1788. There were other similar songs written prior to that, but he made it famous.

The other person who made it famous was Guy Lombardo and his band, the Royal Canadians, who started playing it on New Year’s Eve in this country in 1929. Now, every New Years Eve, as the ball drops to the bottom in Times Square, we hear it blared across the world.

The setting for the song though is not Times Square–it is a pub somewhere in Scotland where two old friends are drinking and talking in Scottish brogue about the past and periodically raising a toast to remember things “for old times’ sake.”

And, truly, when you get to be my age, that is what you do on New Year’s Eve–you remember past friendships, good times and bad, and say a word of gratitude that you have experienced it all.

What will happen in the upcoming New Year is the focus of the new generation. They now have to forge ahead and live their lives as we did. We wish them well, and hope that their lives will be as rewarding and memorable as our own.

Burns describes those two old Scots sitting in that pub in Scotland as being very “Scottish”–“you’ll buy your cup and I’ll buy mine”–no freebie there. But, it will still be a “cup o’kindness.” No hard feelings, only good memories.

They’ve left nothing on the field: “We two have run about the slopes, and picked the daisies fine. But we’ve wandered many a weary foot, since auld lang syne.”

They have worked together but are still each his own: “We two have paddled in the stream, from morning sun till dine. But seas between us broad have roared, since auld lang syne.”

And, at the end of the day, they remain good friends: “And there’s a hand my trusty friend! And give me a hand o’thine! And we’ll take a right good-will, for auld lang syne.”

What more can be said? Alfred, Lord Tennyson wrote that the “old order changeth, yielding place to new.”

When you are our age, on New Year’s Eve, you don’t think about the new–you remember and celebrate the old. “Should old acquaintance be forgot?” Absolutely not! Remember and celebrate it!

Another good friend of mine, now deceased, once summarized things when looking back on life with these words: “Thank the Lord for the ships you got on, not the ones you missed.”

That is also good advice, and so for old times’ sake–have a Happy New Year!

Rolland Kidder is a Stow resident.