Look back and appreciate but also look forward in hope

This day next week it’ll all be over, Christmas will have come and gone and we’ll all be talking about the season that was. Hopefully it’ll have been “a nice and peaceful” Christmas and we’ll be looking forward to the new year.

For some of us it can’t come quick enough; for others the year we’re living through hasn’t been too bad at all. Regardless, this is always the time of the year when we look back and reminisce on days past, changes we’ve seen and generally count our blessings and look forward to a bright new year.

We’re now in the darkest part of the year with the shortest day approaching and from Christmas on we can see the days stretching out in front of us and the nights getting a little shorter week by week.

I find myself reminiscing of bygone days, days when our villages and towns were full of life, when we had shops and businesses doing a lively trade, now it’s changed. This week in my parish there are just three pubs and a shop serving the public. Times have changed.

Last week in this paper there was a picture and a piece about a Pierce mowing machine that has been placed on display in the village of Loughglynn. The machine relates to a bygone era where farmers used a horse to pull this mower to cut the grass to make hay. It was a major advance as now one man and one horse could do the work of possibly five men with scythes. This was at a time when emigration was rampant and labour not necessarily as plentiful.

It got me thinking about today and the way that advances are being made, where many of the jobs that people have now will disappear and go the way of the blacksmith or the cart maker. For every job that goes others arrive of course. As Geoffrey Chaucer told us “time and tide wait for no man”.

The days of the map and map makers are numbered, the Sat Nav has taken over. Digital printing made all the typesetters redundant. What about the digital camera and the changes it has made? Now the phone, who even needs a camera? What ever happened to all the people who worked with film? Those developing the pictures, printing the pictures, making the film that went into the camera. Can that film be even bought now?

The great change in rural Ireland of the 1940s and 50s was the arrival of rural electrification and with it came the new trade of electrician. We now live in a world of electricity where electricians interact with us daily as they perform their tasks, be it bringing electricity to new homes, repairing, or installing new items in our homes. Their role in industry knows no bounds. We have seen new jobs and careers created day after day, people working with computers, information technology, new forms of renewable energy are all creating new opportunities. Many children now in school will be working in jobs in the future that don’t even exist today.

The news all last week revolved around the middle east, war in Gaza and the COP28 being held in Saudi Arabia. This United Nations Climate Change Conference led to an agreement which we’re told is “the beginning of the end of the fossil fuel era”. We must prepare for major changes and like the horse of yesteryear we will see the disappearance of the internal combustion engine, the disappearance of petrol and diesel pumps and a change in career for the diesel fitters, mechanics, and everyone else who works with fossil fuels.

Even the customs officers will no longer be checking for coloured diesel at checkpoints up and down the country. While all these things will go what will replace them? Yes of course we have electric vehicles, and they appear effective and are improving by the day but there’s more to this than just the absence of petrol or diesel and replacing them with electricity.

Today the motorist pays over 50% of the cost of a litre of fuel in tax. If a litre of petrol costs €1.72 at the pumps according to the AA, the motorist is paying 95.50c in tax. While the diesel motorist is paying 87.53c in tax for the same litre of diesel also priced at €1.72. We know that there are only two certainties in life “death and taxes”. You guessed it folks if government is going to lose this tax revenue it’s going to have to be found elsewhere. Watch the price of charging an electric car become expensive in the future! It must!

Thankfully somethings stay the same, Santa and his reindeers continue to travel around the world powered only by the odd carrot or bag of reindeer food left out by children on Christmas Eve. The mystery that is Christmas will hopefully long stay just that, the magical sleigh will carry the man himself and the wonderful sack from Australia to Alaska and from Port Stanley to Longyearbyen and everywhere else on Earth.

Yes, time moves on and we move with it. Look back and appreciate but also look forward in hope.