I now talk you out of the old year and into the new by drawing your attention to a serious and overlooked injustice: time discrimination. How come, in these greetings at the turn of the year, people are always talking about the future and not the past? Happy new year, they will say, but not hope you just had a good one. How come, hey? This is year-prejudice and has no place in a society aiming to be just, or indeed just aiming to be. You may say, nonsense - it's simply that good wishes for what's still to happen can affect things whereas good wishes about the past can't. Twice mistaken. Merely wishing good things doesn't actually achieve them, and when you run into people you haven't seen in a while, or send them a Christmas card, you often don't know what sort of year they've just had, so you could as easily say happy old year, in the hope that your wish may make it true they've had a good one. But you don't. So why not, hey? Blatant unjustified discrimination. You may say, but what about happy birthday? Well, quite. It proves my point. Happy birthday does generally include many happy returns; but it also registers something of the past by its anniversarial nature.
It's an outrage.
Happy New Year to all and Happy Old Year too.