What does 2025 hold in store? Nothing new, according to Ecclesiastes

I was having a discussion on Christmas Day while visiting my family and we were discussing urban legends and “facts we didn’t know.” One such “fact” about the relationship between sailors and manatees led me through a Google search to a webpage that eventually quoted Ecclesiastes 1:9:

“That which hath been is that which shall be, and that which hath been done is that which shall be done; and there is nothing new under the sun.”

That seemed very appropriate a topic to discuss as we pull out the last page of the calendar for 2024 and start using the first page of the 2025 calendar. While we are celebrating with champagne and hats and funny glasses and wishing everyone a “Happy New Year,” can we really say that the year 2025 or what will take place during it is going to be “new?”

In 2024, we had a presidential election that started with the incumbent, President Joe Biden, as the Democratic candidate and a field of eight candidates for the Republican nomination, which eventually went to former President Donald J. Trump. Biden eventually dropped out of the race and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris as his successor on the ballot.

Trump chose Sen. J.D. Vance as his running mate, while Harris chose Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as hers. The ticket of Trump-Vance won 312 electoral votes to 226 for Harris-Walz and Trump and Vance are scheduled to be inaugurated as the 47th president and 50th vice president on Jan. 20, 2025, after the Electoral College votes are tabulated in the first week of January at a joint meeting of the Senate and the House of Representatives.

Trump will again be the nation’s commander-in-chief and leader of the executive branch, a position he last held from January 2017 to January 2021.

He isn’t the first president to be elected to two non-consecutive terms, however; that was first accomplished by Grover Cleveland, who was served as president from 1885 to 1889 and from 1893 to 1897, sandwiching a term by Benjamin Harrison, who defeated Cleveland in the 1888 election.

The Senate and House will both be controlled again by the Republican party, which last had control of both chambers in the first two years of Trump’s first term, from 2017 to 2019, when Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell were the Speaker of the House and Senate Majority Leader, respectively. Mike Johnson will be Speaker of the House when Congress resumes this month, while John Thune will be the Senate Majority Leader.

In 2024, the world endured fires; floods; hurricanes; tornados; earthquakes; wars; school shootings; bus, plane and helicopter crashes; political turmoil; bridge collapses; murders; assassinations; trials; and outages. There were sporting events; elections; peace talks; concerts; celebrations; awards; eclipses; space launches and more.

And we can probably expect at least one of all these things to take place again in 2025 because that’s what life is. It’s a cycle from birth to death, from spring to winter. There is nothing new to see here, folks, because like the Barenaked Ladies once sang, “It’s all been done before!”