WARNING: this post is a downer. Skip it if you wish.

Maybe it is just me, but it seems that the year 2025 has started off with less fanfare than years previously. No one even asked me “Are you two going out New Year’s Eve?” My Facebook friends, who spread out Christmas and Hanukkah greetings, stayed silent for New Year’s Day. No one called. Nothing really seemed to happen. Even the Sugar Bowl has been postponed.

I am not sure why this is the case. I don’t think you can fully blame it on the election of Donald Trump, or on any one cause. It just seems like everyone is tired, just wanting to get on with it without stopping to celebrate or even to reflect.

Of course, the new year already shows the continuation of too many wars, in too many familiar places, and the fact that there were two terror attacks in the United States on News Year’s Day does not help. I know, there has been no official determination that either event was a terror attack, but just like my old friend Potter Stewart (of a few nights ago), I know it when I see it. And I don’t like it.

The attack in New Orleans shows us that the fear of Islamist zealots cannot be dismissed, the attack in Las Vegas shows us the danger of violence surrounding the Trump election cannot be overlooked, and so forth. We may really be in for it, and if the Middle Eastern wars continue, you have to add to that the possibility, or maybe even the probability, of antisemitic attacks, although the incoming government will be, I am certain, on the offensive against a continued rise in antisemitism. At least for now.

Every such incident, and you have to add to it all of the school related violence, leads to tragedies. Death and serious injuries, all of which have repercussions beyond the victims.

Then there are unexpected deaths that involve no violence. I read yesterday a death notice of a 50 year old rabbi, who headed the lower school of a prominent Jewish day school here for the past ten years or so. Today, I see expressions of sorrow from many institutions. It reminded me of the death of my sister’s first grade teacher in the middle of the school year. She was a young woman, who was perfectly healthy and who one day felt sick and who two days later was dead. Some sort of a virus or something that spread to her heart (I certainly don’t remember the details). I was in the 6th grade in the same school, and I remember the shock of this, something we never thought about happening, and how “gee, it could happen to me” spread around. Frightening for the children.

It also occurred around the same time that my grandfather passed away. I don’t remember which was first. His death, of a heart attack days before his 67th birthday, was also unexpected, and created a very unsettling feeling in 10 year old me. And, I remember overhearing someone talking that night, or the next, at the shiva, someone who said to someone else: “This was such a surprise; I thought it was she [i.e., my grandmother] who had been sick.” This remark sent absolute shivers down my back. If my grandmother was the sick one, and my grandfather died, couldn’t I expect my grandmother to go at any time. (In fact, she lived another 16 or 17 years.)

It’s just that these things are so difficult for children to absorb. But, yes, they cope and they get over it, and it probably doesn’t affect them badly as they grow up. And we adults get used to everything, right? But when tragedy comes so often, and when it coincides with a new year which should bring promise and optimism, I think it is that much harder.

Jeez, Arthur, get over it. The sun is shining (sort of) and it’s already Jan 2. Stand up, breathe deeply, and get moving.