Get out and begone to you, you horrible Old Year!
Here's to another one
Welcome, one and all, to another year. I hope your break, if a break was to be had, offered you some joy and left you ready to face whatever 2025 holds in its fist. And if not, take heart. There’s time yet, and I believe in you.
If you’re not in the mood for negativity, no matter how cathartic, scroll right to the end and read only the words from Václav Havel. If, however, you can stomach some grouchy, cynical, or downright miserable takes on the New Year, eat the whole thing up.
Apparently the New Year is on its way and would you believe yet again the unimaginative bastards are going to call it January.
Spike Milligan
Letter to Herbert Kretzmer Esq
10th December 1982
—Spike Milligan: Man of Letters
May the Lord splatter you hugely with goodnesses during the glad New Year. May peace attend your dreams, and may they always be dry.
Dalton Trumbo
Letter to Charles Katz
27th December 1948
—Additional Dialogue: Letters of Dalton Trumbo
New Year’s Eve was a terrible affair when Ruth1 was staying here. By eleven we had all become rather quarrelsome and constrained. Between eleven & twelve we fixed our languishing minds on the New Year drinks. At twelve precisely, Ruth rushed to the front door, jerked it open, & exclaimed into the quiet dark: “Get out and begone to you, you horrible Old Year!” I suppose only a good woman could let loose such a vomit of grudges and furies—but it was curiously shocking.
Sylvia Townsend Warner
Letter to William Maxwell
31st December 1975
—The Element of Lavishness: Letters of Sylvia
A new year is beginning and no doubt it will be as dull, as stupid, as criminal as the ones that have preceded it.
Charles Baudelaire
Letter to Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve
2nd January 1866
—Selected Letters of Charles Baudelaire
Do you think it's at all sensible to wish anyone a Happy New Year? I think the best one can do nowadays is just to wish that we all survive, year by year.
Martha Gellhorn
Letter to Raleigh Trevelyan
26th December 1967
—Selected Letters of Martha Gellhorn
Christmas and New Year’s move toward us again. The old sickening duet. The masses coming out of their tv caves. The family gatherings. The gross dull nothingness, the fake drunks, the fake smiles, the fake people. May we live through this somehow, one more time.
Charles Bukowski
Letter to Douglas Goodwin
4th December 1992
—Reach for the Sun: Selected Letters of Charles Bukowski
I hope the new year is going to be a very happy one for you, and better for me, too. This last one was hell, and I have written no poetry.
Edith Sitwell
Letter to John Lenmann
6th January 1949
—Edith Sitwell: Selected Letters
Here I am at this date and sixty-six miles from a drink. Isn’t it tragic! And there will not be a whistle or a shout to tell me it is a new year. I shall probably be fast asleep, unless I get scared and stay up blinking over a book, for it must be a bad omen to be asleep at the switch of the new twelvemonth.
Hart Crane
Letter to Charlotte and Richard Rychtarik
31st December 1925
—O My Land, O My Friends: Selected Letters of Hart Crane
New Year’s Day—Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual. Yesterday, everybody smoked his last cigar, took his last drink, and swore his last oath. Today, we are a pious and exemplary community. Thirty days from now, we shall have cast our reformation to the winds and gone to cutting our ancient shortcomings considerably shorter than ever. We shall also reflect pleasantly upon how we did the same old thing last year about this time. However, go in, community. New Year's is a harmless annual institution, of no particular use to anybody save as a scapegoat for promiscuous drunks, and friendly calls, and humbug resolutions, and we wish you to enjoy it with a looseness suited to the greatness of the occasion.
Mark Twain
Letter to Territorial Enterprise
1st January 1863
The more I think about it, the more I incline to the opinion that the most important thing of all is not to lose hope and faith in life itself. Anyone who does so is lost, regardless of what good fortune may befall him. And so, from the bottom of my heart, my New Year’s wish is that you not lose your hope, faith and ability to delight in the world—even if the world is the way it is. If you can manage that, everything else will come; if you give in, nothing can help you.
Václav Havel
Letter to his wife, Olga
21st December 1980
—Letters to Olga
Support Letters of Note…
Ruth was the mother of Warner’s partner, Valentine Ackland.
"I think the best one can do nowadays is just to wish that we all survive, year by year."
I love that! It's that's actually a fantastically stoic wish for the morning of January 1st.
Thanks for leaving the best for last.