Friends, if you're one of those "political gluttons," then right about now, a matter of hours from the Iowa caucuses, you must be turned over to CNN and MSNBC. The mouths in those talking heads are letting off enough air to sail you 'round Cape Horn quicker than you could take a plane there. (Of course, if air travel keeps going like it's been going this past year, you could take a popsicle-stick raft and beat the airlines.)

For y'all, this year begins and will end with politics and you are enjoying the feast. Most of us, though, already feel a little stuffed with the monumental predictions of the pols and all the bragging and all the times we've heard the Democrats and the Republicans say, "This will be the most important election in American history." So you gluttons, belly up. The rest of us are leaving room for other things.

This old world has had a tough year, from the war in Iraq to natural disasters to assassinations to continued tensions in a hundred or so of what the experts call "hot spots." Somehow, and they deserve credit, people in those hot spots manage to find a few joys and a few hopes here and there to keep them going, because they do carry on. And the world keeps spinning. Perhaps that's why, after so many challenges, so many really dire things facing this planet, we trust that it, and we, will endure -- because we have.

Some of us will spend today hoping for a better year than the one just past. Maybe it's about a job. Maybe it's about school. Or maybe it's something really serious, such as hoping a son or daughter will return from Iraq healthy and free of future military obligation. Home for the holidays for good, you might say. That sort of puts things in perspective, doesn't it? We hope those folks are the ones popping the corks next year.

The coming year will be for many a lot like the last year or the year before or the year before that. What keeps America's heart beating is all those seemingly routine things that we sometimes take for granted, but that become milestones in our life's calendar, year to year. Someone will think this past Christmas was a piece of cake when he writes the checks to cover his daughter's wedding next June. And someone who's feeling a bit down now because of a lean Christmas and being unemployed will feel pretty good next Jan. 1 about working steady and providing for a family.

America's heart beats on.

By next January, there will have been another round of graduations and proud mamas and papas standing by. Lots of folks who are sick are going to be feeling fine again. And here's a good one -- maybe someone who's been a little lonely lately will have some good friends and lots of companionship during the next holidays! Let's wish for them.

America's heart beats on.

Yes, there's something we must have to keep us going, year after year after year. Hope. Always, hope. A new year is a good time to renew your license to hope, for the pages are turning and the numbers are changing and you may still have some of the same doggone fretting to do that you did last year, but you can at least pick yourself up a new box of hope.

We Americans don't forget the rest of the world, of course, which is why we're the first ones there to help when a disaster of nature or the human-made variety befalls those far from us. And we'll be there again this year, as always.

For the peoples of the world share with us what we share with each other -- a measure of courage, a pinch (at least) of optimism, family feeling, determination, appreciation for blessings, and somewhere deep down, a strength that keeps us going, even when we think we can't. Today's the day those things are resupplied and to some degree, spirits are restored.

So if we may ... quit watching the politicians for a while, and enjoy Grandpa's stories and Mama's ham and some football and your cousins and all that, at least for a while. Happy New Year, and happy hope!