I find it fascinating that in a world where so much is so new, we welcome new years by singing a very old song. The chorus starts out:

For auld lang syne, my jo,
for auld lang syne,
we'll take a cup of kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.

Jo is a Scots word that can be straightforwardly translated to dear, but auld lang syne is more complicated. It literally means something like "old long since." But it's idiomatically similar to "The old times." We have a phrase in English somewhat similar "For auld lang syne." The phrase is "For old time's sake." Here's a bit of my "old long since." 

In the summer of 2001, the writer Amy Krouse Rosenthal emailed Booklist magazine to inquire about a review. At the time, I was working for Booklist as a publishing assistant. Most of my job was data entry, but I also answered many of the low-priority emails that came in. So I responded to Amy with an update on the status of the review, and I also mentioned that on a personal note, I had loved her zine-like column in Might Magazine. I told her I often thought one bit she'd written which went. "Everytime I'm flying and the captain announces the beginning of our descent, the same thing goes through my mind: While we're still pretty high above the city, I'll think "If the plane went down now, we would definitely not be ok. A bit lower, and no- we still wouldn't be ok. But as we get real close to the ground, I'll relax. Ok, we're low enough now.

If it crashed now, we might be ok." She wrote me back the next day and asked if I was a writer and I said I was trying to be and she asked if I had anything that was two minutes long that might work on the radio. 

We don't really know when "Auld Lang Syne" was written. The first verse goes:

Should old acquaintance be forgot,
and never brought to mind?
Should old acquaintance be forgot,
and auld lang syne?

Versions of that date back at least 400 years, but we owe the current song to the great Scottish poet Robert Burns. In December of 1788, he wrote to his friend Frances Dunlop, "Is not the Scotch phrase, "Auld lang syne," exceedingly expressive? There's an old song and tune which is often thrilled through my soul. Light be the turf on the breast of the heaven-inspired poet who composed this glorious fragment." And on the back of the letter, Burns wrote the first known draft of "Auld Lang Syne." At least three of the verses were probably his own, although he would later say of the song that he quote "took it down from an old man."

Part of what makes dating various lines within the song difficult is the song's eternality. It's about drinking together and remembering old times. And almost every idea within it, from picking daisies to wandering through fields to toasting old friends over a beer could've been written five hundred, a thousand, or even three thousand years ago. It's also a rousing ode to splitting the check incidentally, with part of the second verse going:

And surely you'll buy your pint cup!
and surely I'll buy mine!  

But mostly the song is just an apolegetic 

plays at Japanese department stores just before they close. Between 1945 and 1948, the tune was used in South Korea's national anthem. In the Netherlands, its melody inspired one of the country's most famous football chants. And it's a staple of film soundtracks, from Charlie Chaplin's 1925 movie The Gold Rush to It's A Wonderful Life in 1946 to Minions in 2015.

I think "Auld Lang Syne" is popular in Hollywood, not just because it's in the public domain and therefore cheap, but also because it's the rare song that is genuinely wistful. It acknowledges human longing without romanticizing it, and it captures how each new year is a product of all the old ones. When I sing "Auld Lang Syne" on New Years' Eve, I forget the words like everyone does, until I get to the fourth verse, which I do have memorized.

We two have paddled in the stream,
from morning sun till dine;
But seas between us broad have roared
since auld lang syne.

And I think about the many broad seas that have roared between me and the past. Seas of neglect, seas of time, seas of death. I'll never speak again to many of the people who loved me into this moment, just as you will never speak to many of the people who loved you into your now and so we raise a glass to them and hope that perhaps somewhere that they are raising a glass to us.

In her strange and beautiful interactive memoir, Textbook Amy Krouse Rosenthal, Amy wrote