There's a long tradition of newspaper editorial cartoons featuring a Baby New Year. He is an often top-hatted, bare-bellied and cheeky infantile representation of the year to come being ushered in while the Old Man Year is shown out. Old Man Year is always bearded and exhausted and leaning on his cane. It's a familiar image but what may be unknown to most readers is that the job of caring for the Old Year and New Year leading up to this transition usually falls to a somewhat junior columnist at one of the papers.
Every December someone has to organize the staff Christmas parties and someone on staff of each paper has to get up on a ladder and change the number of the year above the masthead at the top of their paper. It's tricky work but the most important end-of-December job is that of caring for New Year Baby and the Old Man Year while the New Year editorial cartoons are being sketched out and the details of the pictorial Year switch are finalized.
For several years now, this last task has fallen to me.
I usually play some cards with the Old Man Year, pour him a few whiskies and listen to his stories and I change the diapers on the New Year. Basically, I try and keep New Year Baby's sash clean enough for picture day at the same time as I keep Old Man Year entertained. I do this for a week or so starting after Christmas while the top brass at the papers finish getting their generally busy editorial pages ready.
I have a Pack 'n' Play and a cribbage board and this is a role I've been happy enough to play but this year the years have been different. There's been nothing Norman Rockwell about this December's little domestic scene. It's been more Norman Bates.
All the years are different and we've had our ups and downs, none of which were worth reporting, but this particular temporal sleepover has been a series of unnerving incidents.
"So, I'm just curious," Old Mr. 2016 said to me a few days ago, sidling up idly while playing with a meat cleaver I'm pretty sure I don't own, "Who was your first celebrity crush?"
"What?" I said, somewhat distracted. I was wiping a suspiciously ectoplasmicy-looking spill from Baby 2017's sash, "Why would you ask me that and do you think it's normal for a baby's head to turn like this?"
I gestured toward Baby 2017, who was perched in a high chair. "I don't remember reading about this in What to Expect the First Year …"
"Oh that's a perfectly normal part of infant development. What you're seeing there is a baby learning to track objects with its eyes in order to ultimately destroy the things you love the most but, tell me, because I still have a few days left around here, is there anyone out there whose sudden death would feel like the end of a more innocent time in your life?"
"Huh, no, not that I can think of anyone off-hand, anyone left anyway. You know, my dad used to sing me Leonard Cohen songs when I was a baby, I thought I knew where that 'lonely wooden tower' was, but listen, I'm almost certain that babies don't usually rotate their heads a full 360 degrees like that …"
"That is totally normal and un-satanic behaviour. Trust me," said 2016, giving me the thumbs-up.
"And the …" I began, gesturing to the floor.
"No, nothing to worry about there; babies love rats, rats love babies. Sometimes heads get bitten off. Don't be alarmist. You really have to give this rat-decapitating infant New Year a chance. But back to my question: Isn't there some famous person, someone who, if they were to drop dead right now, would make the world feel just that little bit less like home for you?"
"Well, like many in my generation, Carrie Fisher felt like a kind of 'possible princess' to me," I replied, a bit testily. "Carrie Fisher played Princess Leia as an everywoman princess, as not-a-prop princess but a plot-propelling princess. That story was playing out pretty nicely for women, what with the way Leia communicated that 'Well, my planet got blown up, so the whole princess thing is off, but you know what I'm thinking for my next project? General' thing."
For about the 50th time since he arrived, Old Man 2016 raised both hands and mouthed a silent, insincere "My bad."
"You know what would really crush me?" I said momentarily hopeful, "I would be totally devastated if the phrase 'My bad' were to die of old age and overuse in your hands …"
"Not happening," said 2016, smiling. "I've already taught it to the baby."
"I don't mean to pry," I began carefully, taking Rosemary's New Year down from the chair and watching him take his first steps – goosesteps, as it happens, "but there's a smell coming from your room …"
"What smell would that be?" said Old Man 2016.
"Well, I mean, to be honest I may actually have peeked a bit and … is that by any chance the spirit of international co-operation fostered slowly and painstakingly over the course of many years hanging from a meat hook in your bedroom?"
"If I told you I just decided to try my hand at making pancetta, would you buy that?" he said, brightly.
"No, I would not," I said.
"Well, it was worth a try," said 2016. " I've had so much success moving belligerent ignorance. I am the year that convinced people that pizza is child porn, that an orange, wall-obsessed, man-sized toddler should lead the world's great superpower, and that abandoning the European Union would be a quick and easy way to boost a nation's economy."
"At this point, I'd be so happy to see the homicidal hope-and-joy-devouring back of you," I sighed, "but this New Year here is already looking pretty alarming to me and … oh, my God!" I cried. "What has the baby got in its mouth?"
"Oh that's just the arc of the moral universe," said Old Man Year, chortling. "I thought he'd like to play with that for a while," and I did try to rescue the arc of the moral universe from Baby 2017.
"Put that down!" I yelled as Baby New Year rose slowly but inexorably from the floor and began to painstakingly wrap his new toy around the Old Year's neck, knocking his blood-stained 2016 sash to the floor.
"That's not supposed to bend that way," I said, but here we are. Happy New Year.