Ode to the "old times" with "Auld Lang Syne"

• That's the spirit of "Auld Lang Syne," the New Year's song that's been sung on one night the world over for many decades, including by me belting it alone in my car on I-75.

Catch up quick: The Scottish song "Auld Lang Syne" (for old times' sake) is attributed to poet Robert Burns in 1788, recalling a shared history over drinks with compatriots.

• "(The song) has continued to be the song of memory and good-fellowship for considerably more than a century," the Free Press wrote in 1919. "It is the best song that has ever been written for this purpose."

I've loved this song since I became old enough to appreciate nostalgia, and many of you likely have memories of it, too.

• I've found it can strike you in two ways: a jovial celebration while clinking beer steins, or, if heard more quietly, an almost melancholy melody best for solitude.
• For me, it evokes some of each. The stroke of midnight on Dec. 31, bittersweet and a little homesick in a bar far from Michigan, and an early winter drive Up North to see family, trees bare and snow mixing with mud along the highway.

"We two have paddled in the stream,

From morning sun till dine;

But seas between us broad have roared

Since auld lang syne."

The bottom line: As another Free Press piece put it in 1894: "Old friendship; old wine; old stories; old customs; fond memories are revived by the new year, and many an old gentleman of the old school looked backward yesterday at the milestones he had passed and thought of that which had occurred on the road."