Recipe for a happy New Year!
Take 12 months, clean them from envy,
bitterness, costiveness, pedantry
and divide them into 30 or 31 parts,
so that the supply is enough for one year.
Each day individually arranged from:
1 part of work and
2 parts of exhilaration and humor.
Add 3 heaped tablespoons optimism,
1 tablespoon tolerance, 1 pellet irony
and 1 pinch of time.
Then dowse the mass with
very much love all over.
The finished dish can be decorated
with posies of small attentions,
serve it daily with amusement!
– Katharina Elisabeth Goethe (1731-1808) –