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Image provided by: Cazenovia Public Library
The midnight hour on New Year's Eve, a traditional favorite scene, is part of this card made by Raphel Tuck and Sons \Art Publishers to Their Majesties the King and Queen\ and printed in Saxony about 1905. By Kathryn Lirxtoman As you're quaffing your last toast to the New Year, beat ing on a noisemaker or pon dering that final, most impor tant resolution, you might well ask yourself, \What's all the fuss about?\ Well, be reassured; genera tions before you have made the same to-do . . . and then some. As a Druid in old England, you would have gathered mis tletoe from sacred trees to give as New Year's gifts. Or you might have gone \first footing\ in Scotland. After a midnight church ser vice, Scottish homes were open to visitors, and it was said that a family's luck for the year would depend on who first crossed the threshold. You would have been hear tily welcomed as a first visitor that night if you were a dark-haired man. On the other hand, if you were a woman, a redhead, a beggar or a person with a squint, your foot first A gold border with horseshoes for luck at each corner surround this New Year greeting sent about 1910. Happy New Year To Everyone! May it bring peace and happiness - We have party goods, drink glasses - HorS d'oeuvres trays, buffet servers, bar sets, and jigger twins for your entertaining. in the door would portend bad luck. Homeowners even got in the habit of paying dark- haired men to be there early. A Russian custom would have required that you beat the corners of your house with sticks to drive out Satan around the new year. You could try that today if you can ignore the gape-mouthed stares of your neighbors. How about \wassailing\ your apple tree, as British farmers were wont to do, by sprinkling it with cider and singing a song for a good crop in the coming year? Just tell the quickly gathering crowd that it's an old family custom. If you were a king in an cient Babylon, you would have been stripped of your royal robe, made to kneel and then solemnly boxed on the ears and tweaked on the nose by the high priest as part of the official New Year's festival. At a New Year's Eve party in Derbyshire, England, you might have fished for a ring in a \posset\ pot. To foretell who would marry during the following year, the hostess dropped her wedding ring into the pot of hot spiced milk and wine, and the singles tried to pick up the ring with each ladelful of the beverage. If a guest succeeded, it was a sure omen that he would wed that year. Gift giving, visiting friends, driving-out evil and foretelling events of the coming year are but a few New Year's cus toms that have been carried dh through the ages. New Year's is one holiday that just about everyone around the world, Westerners and Easter ners, celebrate in some fashion on some set date, says Shirley Cherkasky, who Has re searched holiday celebrations for the Smithsonian's Division of Performing Arts. New Year's is \as old as the hills,\ too. Recorded history ihows that for more than 5,000 years people have had •ome way of recognizing the beginning of a new year. In support of the time-honored concept of annual rebirth or CAZENOVIA JEWELRY 49 ALBANY ST 655 -9114 Happy New Year To All From Cazenovia Greenhouses Cazenovia Abroad 67 Albany St. Happy New Year Wishing you every \ happiness throughout the coming year. Open 10-5 Browsers Welcome mm i ' ' ' m *^^^ WATCH FOR OUR HANES ANNUAL SALE IN JANUARY guc 9999 Date and Prices will appear in later advertisement. KKAK All Christmas Exchanges MUST be made by Saturday January 14th. 9 t MuM«*fl. Ud •t «S Albany Si • 0***9 00 MlM renewal, rituals and celebra tions have been the order of the day. The day, however, has not always been observed on the first of January by many of the world's nations. In fact, the new year has been launched on Christmas, Eas ter, the autumnal equinox, the winter solstice and March 25 (around the time of the vernal equinox). March 25 seems to have been one of the most often celebrated dates because it was the time for sowing crops, the first step in the an nual agricultural cycle. The Romans apparently were the first, in 153 B.C., to mark January 1 as the begin ning of the year. That was just one part of their numer ous calendar reforms aimed at making man's schedule agree with nature's cycles. But it wasn't until the Gregorian calendar, the same one we use today, was instituted by Pope Gregory in 1582 that January 1 began to gain wide accep tance. The day's proximity to the winter solstice, when the days begin to lengthen, made it a logical beginning. All the haggling over the time of celebration, however, didn't make the need or re ason for New Year's events any less significant. The rites of New Year's have long helped people make it through the coming year in the best possible way — whether it was winning out over evil, producing a good crop or av oiding a death in the family. Scholars have tried to pin point the common elements of early New Year's celebrations around the world, and they've determined that the things we do today ,to celebrate actually seem to have started in the past. It has been suggested that the excessive drinking as sociated with some New Year'g Eve parties is a relic of the deliberate disruption and chaos practiced by primitive peoples at the end of each year. If things weren't topsy turvy, how could they make a fresh start with the beginning of the new year? Today's New Year's Day football contests on the play ing field could very well be a modern-day remnant of another ancient practice — that of cleansing or purifying through sacrifice, confession or ritual combat between good and evil. Cleansing gave one a chance for a brand new start. The din and racket we now think we're making just for fun and celebration — the blowing of party horns, the tooting of car horns, the ring ing of bells, the banging of pots and pans and, in some places, the firing of guns — was originally meant to scare away low and evil spirits. Making a good start in the new year by resolving to change something or \turning over a new leaf has been part of New Year's plans for ages. Watching today's New Year's resolutions fall by the wayside as the year progresses doesn't mean it was all for naught. So, this New Year's Eve, as the gray, decrepit man repre senting the old year staggers out your door and the bright- eyed baby, the new year, bounces in, take a moment to reflect. As you stare into the punch bowl and review the past 365 days, look to the fu ture, too. In a thousand years, others might be staring into a punch bowl, wondering how people celebrated a new year in the 1980s. f 3 9 s
