Grayton Beach State Park, Santa Rosa Beach, Florida
Did you sing it? If you did, did you know the words, or did you just sort of hum along? Do you know what the words mean? Did you know there’s actually about four verses? (most of which is Old Scottish and uses words we don’t know or understand 😊) You know what I’m talking about – the traditional New Year’s Eve song, “Auld Lang Syne”.
Should auld acquaintance be forgot
And never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot
And days of auld lang syne?For auld lang syne, my dear
For auld lang syne
We’ll take a cup o’ kindness yet
For days of auld lang syne
Essentially, ‘auld lang syne’ means ‘old times’. The literal translation is ‘old time since’.
Someone at mentalfloss.com did a lot of research on it. If you’re really anxious to find out, you can go there and read it for yourself. Suffice it to say, its origins begin in 1711 Scotland.
How then did a Scottish folk song with a murky provenance and nothing at all to do with New Year’s Eve become associated with the holiday? It’s largely thanks to bandleader Guy Lombardo. In 1929, Lombardo and his band played “Auld Lang Syne” as transitional music while performing at New York City’s Roosevelt Hotel during a New Year’s Eve broadcast. It was played just after midnight, and heard over radio and television airwaves, inadvertently spawning a global tradition.
Today, “Auld Lang Syne” is one of the most recognizable songs around the world, where it’s played at funerals, celebrations, and as a warning that closing time is approaching at stores throughout Japan.
Here’s some New Year’s Eve Trivia from Carson Village’s December Newsletter (our former Alabama residence for the past five weeks).
- Ringing out the old year and ushering in a new one is a custom that goes back at least 4,000 years to the ancient Babylonians.
- The first places on the globe to greet the new year are the island nations of Kiribati, Samoa and Tonga, located in the South Pacific Ocean.
- Just across the international date line, American Samoa, a U.S. territory, is the world’s last inhabited locale to welcome in the year.
- New York City’s Times Square ball drop is a celebration that began in 1907.
- Singing “Auld Lang Syne” at midnight has grown into a worldwide tradition.
- Puckering up for a New Year’s Eve kiss is said to bring good luck to a relationship and has roots in German and English folklore.
- Those novelty eyeglasses with frames shaped into the numbers of the coming year were invented in 1990 by two friends in Seattle.
- Causing a ruckus with noisemakers began as a way to chase off bad luck.
- Some don’t stay up to celebrate; in a survey, over 10% of people said they fall asleep before midnight.
- That cute little guy decked out in a diaper, top hat and sash is known as Baby New Year. he’s been a symbol of the holiday since the days of ancient Greece.
It was a lovely day today, and we took advantage of it because it’s supposed to rain for the next two days. We rode our bikes over to the beach (in shorts and t’s!) and then walked quite a ways in the sand and surf. It was a bit windy, and too cold for us to swim, but not for a few other more hardy souls.
What can I say? I did my best. : )
Can’t say we’ve ever seen anything like it!
We weren’t aware people/businesses could claim beaches.
We’re allowed to walk on it, but not set our stuff out on it.
We understand not using their chairs though.
The only other thing we did was cook and eat. Are you surprised? 😊
We were in bed by 10:00pm. How about you?
CHICKEN CORDON BLEU CASSEROLE
12 oz. package egg noodles, slightly undercooked
2 cans (10 oz. each) cream of chicken soup
1 soup can full of milk
¼ t. thyme
1 t. black pepper
4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut in half lengthwise
Poultry seasoning
8 thin slices baked ham
8 thin slices Swiss cheese
½ C. dried bread crumbs
Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
Boil noodles for about 3-4 minutes and drain.
Stir together the soup, milk, thyme and pepper in a large bowl. Toss this mixture with the noodles and place in a greased 9 x 13 pan.
Season the chicken with some poultry seasoning. Wrap each piece of chicken with a ham slice. Lay on the noodles, cover and bake 25-30 minutes. Remove the cover and place a slice of cheese over each piece of chicken. Sprinkle with bread crumbs and bake, uncovered, for an additional 10 minutes.
FRENCH SILK PIE
½ C. butter
¾ C. sugar
2 squares (2 oz.) unsweetened baking chocolate
1 t. vanilla
2 eggs
1 C. heavy whipping cream + 2 T. sugar
1 prepared shortbread pie shell
Melt chocolate in microwave and let cool some. Cream butter and sugar till it becomes a lighter color and is a bit fluffy (about 4 minutes). Add melted chocolate and vanilla. Add 1 egg at a time, beating for 5 minutes after each addition and scrapping sides of bowl continuously. Pour into pie shell. Prepare whipped cream by beating the cream along with sugar on high speed of an electric mixer until stiff peaks form. Cover the pie with the whipped cream. Chill until firm.
HINT: Not so much a hint as a story. I first had this pie at a now closed restaurant near Holden Beach we had gone to for my birthday. I fell in love with it, but could never find the recipe. Of course, this was before Google ! I finally discovered it right under my nose in a pie cookbook I already had!