This article made me think about the number of times I have heard someone get all the way through Auld Lang Syne without exchanging singing for humming. Lets face it, by the time we start singing Auld Lang Syne most people are already full of enough holiday cheer (booze) that mumbling the lyrics becomes perfectly acceptable. After looking up the lyrics I found out that I knew about 60% of the song. That means that you can count me in with the rest of the holiday mumblers. How many people on the dope know all of the lyrics to Auld Lang Syne? I am going to go practice so that I might graduate to slurred accurate lyrics this year.
Let’s see how close I can get without checking the article:
[spoiler]Should auld aquaintance be forgot
and never brought to mind
should old auld acquaintance be forgot
and days of auld lang syne
For auld lang syne, my dear
For auld lang syne,
We’ll drink a cup of kindness yet
for auld lang syne.
[/spoiler]
Just don’t ask me what it means! I guess I’ve always assumed it meant “Old times’ sake” or something close.
OK, now to look at the link.
Hmm, no lyrics there. But here they are. I got the first verse and chorus mostly right - close enough that I wonder if I just have a regional variation - but I never knew there were more verses. We’ve only ever heard/sung the one.
So there we are. Next?
I had to study the whole thing in school once. I wasn’t really impressed by it, actually. In revenge, the following New Year’s Eve I insisted on singing the whole thing.
Well, turns out I knew. But then I learned the words before I sang it.
This claims to be an authoritive answer to the OP’s question. I think the basic theme is that we (the revelers) intend to look to the future and forget the past, or at least the mistakes and misfortunes of the past.
http://www.worldburnsclub.com/newsletter/auld_lang_syne_what_about.htm
I know it - when I saw that news story about people not knowing it I figured they must have asked them about the other verses or something. Do people really not know it? There’s hardly any words!
Being a member of choral groups from 5th grade on, I know the words to LOTS of songs.
So, yes.
I agree with you, and yet I’ve been out on many occasions in the past where many, if not most, there did not know the words.
They sing them loudly and clearly at the end of It’s a Wonderful Life, which always puzzled me because the movie is set on Christmas Eve, not New Year’s Eve. Just the same, for anybody who was around when it was being shown five times a day on every channel every day in December, there is no excuse for not knowing the words!
Sure they are:
Should auld aquantance be forgot
and drunken mumble mumble
mumble mumble mumble mumble
mumbl–auld lang syne.
I’ve been watching that movie every year on Christmas for many moons, and that’s exactly why I am the only one I know (my age) who knows the words 
I did well. I immediatey got confused with the lyrics from Loch Lomond- no excuse. Both are haunting.