It is hard to believe we are just days away from the beginning of a New Year 2025, midnight Tuesday, Dec. 31. This decade is about to be halfway over, and the memories will last. Here at the conclusion of 2024, I am reminded that everyone wants their best days to be ahead, that makes more promise for the future. When we talk about preserving our history, it is not just old structures, including homes and buildings, but those memories are important and relationships from through the years we have from our past.
My earliest memories of the beginning of the New Year, for a long time was here in my home county of Carroll. My Dad and I would make our annual trip on New Year’s Eve to the Carrollton Courthouse to ring the bell in the courtroom. As a child getting a chance to pull the old rope was meaningful in the ringing out of the old year keeping with the memories of the past, and the hope with promise that the New Year would bring beginning at midnight. This was back in the late seventies and eighties, times have changed, and that’s part of living. Back then in Carroll County the sheriff was C.D. Whitfield and Ralph Self was the chancery clerk. In that very courthouse, later I would attend supervisor meetings as a county official, first as county coroner/ medical examiner then later as emergency management director. Here at the end of December 2024 we are reminded of the promise of the future and what it beholds, with being mindful of the past.
To this day the things from growing up in a small town are cherished memories, that means more the older I get. When thinking about New Years from the past with the turning of the calendar, I can hear that old bell ringing in my head and thoughts from yesterday with memories from years ago. Those old memories have the meaning of the New Year that is not commercialized, simple in the sense of the anticipation of a better tomorrow.
As this New Year 2025 begins, who we are and where we live is a treasure. Sure, the bright lights of the big cities are attractive and great for a visit, but nothing compares to home. In other words, those New Year’s Eve’s I spent with Daddy, and a few citizens ringing the old bell in the courtroom means more to me these days; more than if I was in New York City with a front row seat watching that ball drop. As we look to the future, making our community the best it can be, I am reminded of the scriptures. “This is the day the LORD has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it” Psalm 118:24.
We carry with us our past with looking to the future and beginning a new year in 2025.
Ken Strachan serves as the mayor of North Carrollton and is a member of the Mississippi Municipal League board of directors
