2020 was a tough year. Here’s how we can make it mean something.

During 2020, many people experienced devastating personal losses of loved ones, jobs, prospects and opportunities due to covid-19. The world slid deeper toward devastating climate change. A raw outbreak of racial violence came home to roost. And the presidential election ended with a full-fledged assault on democracy.

How can we reconcile the grief and pain and look forward to a better 2021?

A look back at two other New Year’s after troubled times, in 1862 and 1941, should give us inspiration. Both years resulted in tremendous death and destruction. On the last day of 1862, 10,000 men died in a Civil War battle in Tennessee. While Europe and some parts of Asia were at war in 1941, Americans were largely spared the worst effects of the widening global conflict until Dec. 7 of that year, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, leaving 2,403 Americans dead.

By Alexis McCrossen

During 2020, many people experienced devastating personal losses of loved ones, jobs, prospects and opportunities due to covid-19. The world slid deeper toward devastating climate change. A raw outbreak of racial violence came home to roost. And the presidential election ended with a full-fledged assault on democracy.

How can we reconcile the grief and pain and look forward to a better 2021?

A look back at two other New Year’s after troubled times, in 1862 and 1941, should give us inspiration. Both years resulted in tremendous death and destruction. On the last day of 1862, 10,000 men died in a Civil War battle in Tennessee. While Europe and some parts of Asia were at war in 1941, Americans were largely spared the worst effects of the widening global conflict until Dec. 7 of that year, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, leaving 2,403 Americans dead.

Yet, instead of looking backward, Americans in those stressful times looked forward. They carried on and persevered. And at the dawn of the new year, their presidents staked out new and cosmically important positions. In both instances, as one year gave way to another, the symbolic and ritual possibilities of New Year’s made way for consequential departures from the status quo. What was done the previous year could not be undone, it might not be forgotten, but it could be made to matter.

Since 1790, American presidents have made the new year into an audacious nationalist holiday. That year, George Washington, taking his cue from European sovereigns, hosted what would be the first of more than 130 New Year’s Day presidential receptions. It was the first true New Year’s party in the United States, and soon became an annual spectacle that newspapers throughout the country covered in lavish detail.

Washington also made the start of the new year the occasion for delivering a report on the State of the Union, which that year he opened with his congratulations “on the present favorable prospects of our public affairs.” It is true that 1789 had been an especially good year for the nation. It successfully held its first national elections, the U.S. Congress met for the first time! Still, rather than rest easy, Washington set out bold and visionary plans for the coming year.

And presidents have continued this trend in far darker moments.

It is an understatement to say that 1862 was a bad year in the United States as the country fought the Civil War. In September, President Abraham Lincoln issued a warning to the Confederate states that if they did not return to the Union by Jan. 1, 1863, then enslaved people would be freed. Few expected that the threat would be effective in restoring the Union, and so the fighting intensified in its bitterness and extent. In the last three weeks of the year alone, the Union and Confederacy fought seven devastating battles, leaving more than 37,000 men dead but neither side in command.

When New Year’s Day dawned in the capital of the Confederacy, Richmond, enslavers seeking to buy or rent men, women and children paid the highest prices ever commanded in the slave market. And in Atlanta, the “rebel president” Jefferson Davis gloated that “the New Year comes in auspiciously for us.” It seemed for the Confederacy, in the words of its commanding Gen. Braxton Bragg who was in the midst of the Battle of Stones River, that “God has granted us a happy new year.”

Yet though the prospect for a Union military victory was uncertain enough that the Confederates felt good, New Year’s Day was redemptive for the Union. At the White House, after ceremonially shaking the hands of thousands of well-wishers for three straight hours at the annual New Year’s Day reception, Lincoln retired to his office to sign the Emancipation Proclamation. The subsequent celebrations among anti-slavery activists were “wild and grand,” as the escaped enslaved person and abolitionist Frederick Douglass recounted. Clearly, the very bad parts of 1862 persisted — bloodshed and disunion — but Lincoln’s New Year’s proclamation planted a redemptive seed: he boldly emancipated 4 million human beings and their descendants from slavery. Rather than mourn the past, abolitionists and freed people celebrated the future.

War, death and destruction also defined the year 1941. Coming on the heels of a decade of economic hardship and social distress, the daily headlines were ominous and sickening. “Invasion of Britain Held Near.” “Appeal for Assistance to Avert a Bread Famine.” “Lynching on the Increase.” “Fighting Continues on All China Fronts.” “If Moscow Falls.” “Nazi Casualties 4,000,000.” “Rumania Summons Jews.”

Then came Pearl Harbor and the entry of the United States into the war, with nearly everyone mobilizing for an uncertain future and what would come in 1942. Nevertheless, there were New Year’s festivities. Though noisemakers were banned from Times Square and 2,100 men were deployed there to guard against air raids, crowds gathered to watch the ball drop, bars were packed with partygoers who sang “Auld Lang Syne” with gusto, and radio networks broadcast New Year’s dance parties. Revelry turned to prayer the next day, in concert with President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s proclamation making it a National Day of Prayer.

While a guest at the White House for the Christmas holidays, Winston Churchill had slipped away for a few days to address the Canadian Parliament. With a savvy eye toward New Year’s as an opportunity for publicity, he arrived in D.C.’s Union Station early that first morning of 1942. As he walked through the concourse, the British prime minister shook hands with African American porters and exchanged cheerful New Year’s greetings with everyone he encountered. The arrival of a new year has always been a time to build and strengthen alliances, and no one had mastered the art of connection like Churchill, a man of great charm with a strong sense of ceremony and timing. He then attended church with Roosevelt, laid a wreath on Washington’s tomb and visited the Lincoln Memorial.

But it was that evening that optimism translated into decisive international action. Roosevelt, Churchill and diplomats from several countries, including China and the Soviet Union, signed a pact in which they declared themselves “the United Nations.” What was this New Year’s Day pact? A pledge “to defend life, liberty, independence, and religious freedom,” and, as if that were not enough, “to preserve human rights and justice.” Audacious, bold, worthy of the dawn of a new year and of a new age.

During our nation’s darkest days, each of these New Year’s gave the country an opportunity to not only look forward but also boldly dream about the future. Lincoln and Roosevelt, like Washington and most of their presidential peers, pointed Americans toward the wonderful things they hoped awaited their fellow citizens in the new year. Theirs were not simply empty words but conveyed heartfelt conviction that each new year brings with it renewal and rebirth. They urged Americans to put faith in their future.

This lesson is worth recalling as we experience a similar, auspicious moment — the arrival of a new year after a very bad year. The arrival of 2021 presents an opportunity. As troubled as are our times, we do have rays of hope, like the newly approved coronavirus vaccines and the ushering in of a new presidential administration. These are each short-term, but desperately needed, fixes. What we also need are bold visions for the future that address climate change, race relations and inequality. Just as Rep. John Lewis urged us to “make good trouble,” let us also make good out of these troubled times.

Alexis McCrossen is a professor at SMU Dallas, and the author of a forthcoming book titled “Time’s Touchstone: The New Year in American Life.”