When conflict rages, and pain, grief and loneliness overwhelm us, where is the music of hope and peace? For Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, the answer to that question had everything to do with Christmas.

In these verses, Alfred Lord Tennyson yearns for a happier, nobler, more just and more charitable year, in which men turn from their evils and prepare for Christ’s thousand-year reign.

“Auld Lang Syne” is well known in many countries, especially in the English-speaking world, where its traditional use is to bid farewell to the old year at the stroke of midnight.