You’ve tried haruspication, consulting the giblets of the festive fowl for clues to the events of the coming year, but still you've had no clear predictions (if you're a vegan there has been no discernible feedback from that butchered Greggs' faux sausage roll).

Sit back as Old McKay's Almanac reveals what is to mourn or celebrate, and what is to come in 2019, the Year of the Pig. The old one, the Year of the Dog, the mangy cur which raised its leg all over 2018, is being dragged away and pacified, put to sleep by a continuous tape loop of Theresa May expounding on yet another cunning plan for Brexit. So this year will be all truffles ... well not exactly.

The news is mixed ... actually, it's pretty terrible. There will be issues with global finance and stock markets – you didn't need to be a seer to predict that one – and while you may lose friends, work relations and other connections, this usually is a good thing and better for you in the long run apparently. This is the Trump scenario, after all he's lost or fired all those close to him and clearly lost touch with reality, but he's still the most powerful man in the world, and sitting on a huge fortune.

This month brings a celebration of the life and work of Rasputin, born 150 years ago – Ra, Ra Rasputin, lover of the Russian queen, as biographers Boney M so succinctly put it. It's also 100 years since the death of Rosa Luxemburg who, I'm pretty sure, set up one of the world's first commercial radio stations, heard under the blankets by teenagers in the fifties and sixties, and which thrived until the pirates and then Tony Blackburn killed it.

January was also the month, 50 years ago, when the Beatles took to the roof of Apple Records to give their last live concert, to be closed down after noise complaints to the Metropolitan Police. They played Get Back at high volume but it didn't discourage Plod who braved the sonic waves to pull the plug from the Vox amps.

As we segue into February the mop tops reappear, although five years earlier, to touch down by Pan Am and conquer America. Records were burned, the Bible Belt buckled and the short back and sides disappeared, at least until 2018. In the same year, 1964, Muhammad Ali, then Cassius Clay, definitively proved he was the greatest by whupping the big bear Sonny Liston.

Yuri Gagarin, who would be 85 in March if he had lived, became the first human to journey into outer space when he looped the earth in April 1961. That day is still celebrated in Russia every year as Cosmonautics Day, for which Trump Enterprises hold the franchise.

It was March, too, when Vincent van Gogh was born, in 1853. The contemporary public hated his work and he only sold one picture (until rich collectors cashed in later) and he even fell out with Paul Gauguin who, granted, wasn't easy to share a house with. After nine weeks together Vince had had enough of him and went for his former pal with a razor and, when Paul was quicker off his mark decided to blood the blade by cutting off his ear. It didn't make sense at the time, because he was carted off to a lunatic asylum. On a starry, starry night, as the singer Don McLean commemorated it.

March may even bring Brexit, but who knows? Certainly not those negotiating it.

At the end of April the Japanese Emperor Akihito is abdicating. It didn't used to be allowed for emperors to chuck it in, them being gods and such, but they changed the law so that he could. He made his final public appearance on New Year's Day, waving to a crowd of 150,000 people. Crown Price Naruhito will inherit the Chrysanthemum Throne and his dad's role, which involves a lot of waving and not much else. In Japan the emperor is called Tenno, or heavenly sovereign, Mikado in English, about whom a terrible opera was written.

Nato was also founded 70 years ago in April, but it won't make the century many if Trump has his way.

May marks the death, 500 years ago, of Leonardo da Vinci, if not the world's best artist, certainly the most expensive. His painting of the Mona Lisa with her quizzical smile has puzzled historians for centuries, who haven't yet reached the obvious conclusion that Leo was a bit of a jokester.

It is also 200 years since the birth of Queen Victoria and had she not arrived neither would EastEnders. Queen Vic had no understanding of family planning and thus had nine children, but hated being pregnant and was disgusted by breast feeding. Hence her oft-repeated sentence: "We are not amused".

In June, we'll be celebrating, by once again showing the Wizard of Oz back-to-back, the work and life of Judy Garland who died 50 years ago. It will also be 100 years since the Treaty of Versailles was signed, which brought an end to World War 1 but teed up number 2.

Meanwhile, in July, Angela Merkel will be picking up her busfahrschein, aged 65, and retiring in due course as German Chancellor, when she will write her memoirs, largely about getting rid of the whingeing Brits. It may be called Get It Right Up Ye.

It'll be 50 years since Woodstock, in August, when hordes of hippies – half a million strong according to the song – descended on a farm north of New York to listen to Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin and consume a monumental quantity of drugs. Some may still be there. It will also be 250 years since the birth of Napoleon Bonaparte and, three months earlier, his foe the Duke of Wellington, who crushed him at Waterloo, as anyone familiar with the canon of Abba knows.

There will be reams of newspaper and TV coverage in September about the outbreak of World War Two 80 years ago. I'm almost sure we won that one, but clearly not the subsequent peace.

It is also 80 years since the death of Sigmund Freud. It's a little known fact that Freud wrote a joke book, although he was rotten at telling them. He argued that jokes, like dreams, satisfy our unconscious desires. After him the expression Freudian slip was coined, which is when you say one thing and mean your mother.

It will be, in October, 150 years since the birth of Mahatma Gandhi, the pacifist who led the Indian independence movement and coined the phrase, "Gie's peace". Gandhi was also chaste in later life and made a practice of sleeping with nubile, naked young women to test his restraint. At least that's what he said. This month was also, 80 years ago, when nylon stockings were sold for the first time in a store in Wilmington, Delaware. Gandhi would have been restrained.

In November, the only man to enter the British Parliament with honest intentions is once again honoured. Guy Fawkes was resting on several barrels of dynamite under the Lords when he was arrested. More than 400 years later the place still hasn't been abolished.

In December 1980 the inimitable John Lennon was shot dead by Mark David Chapman because he craved attention. Those of us who are old enough remember where we were that day. It was also the month the Beveridge Report on the creation of the welfare state was published, in 1942.

And, in 1872, it was when the Marie Celeste was found drifting in the Atlantic ocean, surely yet another metaphor for Brexit.

So, as they no doubt say in Morningside: "You'll have had your 2019."