Chapter X: New Year

New Year
Midnight Mass for the Dying Year
The Death of the Old Year
A New Year's Carol
New Year's Resolutions
Love and Joy come to You
Ring Out, Wild Bells
New Year's Eve, 1850
Rejoicings upon the New Year's Coming of Age
New Year's Rites in the Highlands
The Chinese New Year
New Year's Gifts in Thessaly
"Smashing" in the New Year
New Year Calls in Old New York
Sylvester Abend in Davos

New Year

Each New Year is a leaf of our love's rose;
It falls, but quick another rose-leaf grows.
So is the flower from year to year the same,
But richer, for the dead leaves feed its flame.

RICHARD WATSON GILDER

_By permission of Houghton Mifflin Company_

Midnight Mass for the Dying Year

Yes, the Year is growing old,
And his eye is pale and bleared!
Death, with frosty hand and cold,
Plucks the old man by the beard,
Sorely, sorely!

The leaves are falling, falling,
Solemnly and slow;
Caw! caw! the rooks are calling,
It is a sound of woe,
A sound of woe!

Through woods and mountain passes
The winds, like anthems, roll;
They are chanting solemn masses,
Singing, "Pray for this poor soul,
Pray, pray!"

And the hooded clouds, like friars,
Tell their beads in drops of rain,
And patter their doleful prayers;
But their prayers are all in vain,
All in vain!

There he stands in the foul weather,
The foolish, fond Old Year,
Crowned with wild-flowers and with heather,
Like weak, despised Lear,
A king, a king!

Then comes the summer-like day,
Bids the old man rejoice!
His joy, his last! O, the old man gray
Loveth that ever-soft voice,
Gentle and low.

To the crimson woods he saith,
To the voice gentle and low
Of the soft air, like a daughter's breath,
"Pray do not mock me so!
Do not laugh at me!"

And now the sweet day is dead;
Cold in his arms it lies;
No stain from its breath is spread
Over the glassy skies,
No mist or stain!

Then, too, the Old Year dieth,
And the forests utter a moan,
Like the voice of one who crieth
In the wilderness alone,
"Vex not his ghost!"

Then comes, with an awful roar,
Gathering and sounding on,
The storm-wind from Labrador,
The wind Euroclydon,
The storm-wind!

Howl! howl! and from the forest
Sweep the red leaves away!
Would, the sins that thou abhorrest,
O Soul! could thus decay,
And be swept away!

For there shall come a mightier blast,
There shall be a darker day;
And the stars, from heaven down-cast,
Like red leaves be swept away!
Kyrie, eleyson!
Christe, eleyson!

HENRY W. LONGFELLOW

The Death of the Old Year

Full knee-deep lies the winter snow,
And the winter winds are wearily sighing:
Toll ye the church-bell sad and slow,
And tread softly and speak low,
For the old year lies a-dying.
Old year, you must not die;
You came to us so readily,
You lived with us so steadily,
Old year, you shall not die.

He lieth still: he doth not move:
He will not see the dawn of day.
He hath no other life above.
He gave me a friend, and a true true-love,
And the New Year will take 'em away.
Old year, you must not go;
So long as you have been with us,
Such joy as you have seen with us,
Old year, you shall not go.

He froth'd his bumpers to the brim;
A jollier year we shall not see.
But tho' his eyes are waxing dim,
And tho' his foes speak ill of him,
He was a friend to me.
Old year, you shall not die;
We did so laugh and cry with you,
I've half a mind to die with you,
Old year, if you must die.

He was full of joke and jest,
But all his merry quips are o'er.
To see him die, across the waste
His son and heir doth ride post-haste,
But he'll be dead before.
Every one for his own.
The night is starry and cold, my friend,
And the New-year blithe and bold, my friend,
Comes up to take his own.

How hard he breathes! over the snow
I heard just now the crowing cock.
The shadows flicker to and fro:
The cricket chirps: the light burns low:
'Tis nearly twelve o'clock.
Shake hands, before you die.
Old year, we'll dearly rue for you:
What is it we can do for you?
Speak out before you die.

His face is growing sharp and thin.
Alack! our friend is gone.
Close up his eyes: tie up his chin:
Step from the corpse, and let him in
That standeth there alone,
And awaiteth at the door.
There's a new foot on the floor, my friend,
And a new face at the door, my friend,
A new face at the door.

ALFRED TENNYSON

A New Year's Carol

Ah! dearest Jesus, Holy Child,
Make Thee a bed, soft, undefil'd,
Within my heart, that it may be
A quiet chamber kept for Thee.
My heart for very joy doth leap,
My lips no more can silence keep,
I too must sing, with joyful tongue,
That sweetest ancient cradle song,
"Glory to God in highest Heaven,
Who unto man His Son hath given."
While angels sing, with pious mirth,
A glad New Year to all the earth.

MARTIN LUTHER

New Year's Resolutions

January 1st.--The service on New Year's Eve is the only one in the whole year that in the least impresses me in our little church, and then the very bareness and ugliness of the place and the ceremonial produce an effect that a snug service in a well-lit church never would. Last night we took Irais and Minora, and drove the three lonely miles in a sleigh. It was pitch-dark, and blowing great guns. We sat wrapped up to our eyes in furs, and as mute as a funeral procession.

"We are going to the burial of our last year's sins," said Irais, as we started; and there certainly was a funereal sort of feeling in the air. Up in our gallery pew we tried to decipher our chorales by the light of the spluttering tallow candles stuck in holes in the woodwork, the flames wildly blown about by the draughts. The wind banged against the windows in great gusts, screaming louder than the organ, and threatening to blow out the agitated lights together. The parson in his gloomy pulpit, surrounded by a framework of dusty carved angels, took on an awful appearance of menacing Authority as he raised his voice to make himself heard above the clatter. Sitting there in the dark, I felt very small, and solitary, and defenceless, alone in a great, big, black world. The church was as cold as a tomb; some of the candles guttered and went out; the parson in his black robe spoke of death and judgment; I thought I heard a child's voice screaming, and could hardly believe it was only the wind, and felt uneasy and full of forebodings; all my faith and philosophy deserted me, and I had a horrid feeling that I should probably be well punished, though for what I had no precise idea. If it had not been so dark, and if the wind had not howled so despairingly, I should have paid little attention to the threats issuing from the pulpit; but, as it was, I fell to making good resolutions. This is always a bad sign,--only those who break them make them; and if you simply do as a matter of course that which is right as it comes, any preparatory resolving to do so becomes completely superfluous. I have for some years past left off making them on New Year's Eve, and only the gale happening as it did reduced me to doing so last night; for I have long since discovered that, though the year and the resolutions may be new, I myself am not, and it is worse than useless putting new wine into old bottles.

"But I am not an old bottle," said Irais indignantly, when I held forth to her to the above effect a few hours later in the library, restored to all my philosophy by the warmth and light, "and I find my resolutions carry me very nicely into the spring. I revise them at the end of each month, and strike out the unnecessary ones. By the end of April they have been so severely revised that there are none left."

"There, you see I am right; if you were not an old bottle your new contents would gradually arrange themselves amiably as a part of you, and the practice of your resolutions would lose its bitterness by becoming a habit."

She shook her head. "Such things never lose their bitterness," she said, "and that is why I don't let them cling to me right into the summer. When May comes, I give myself up to jollity with all the rest of the world, and am too busy being happy to bother about anything I may have resolved when the days were cold and dark."

"And that is just why I love you," I thought. She often says what I feel.

From _Elizabeth and her German Garden_

Love and Joy come to You

Here we come a-wassailing
Among the leaves so green,
Here we come a-wandering,
So fair to be seen.
_Love and joy come to you,
And to you your wassail too,
And God bless you, and send you
A happy New Year._

We are not daily beggars
That beg from door to door,
But we are neighbours' children
Whom you have seen before.
_Love and joy, &c._

Good Master and good Mistress,
As you sit by the fire,
Pray think of us poor children
Who are wandering in the mire.
_Love and joy, &c._

We have a little purse
Made of ratching leather skin;
We want some of your small change
To line it well within.
_Love and joy, &c._

Call up the butler of this house,
Put on his golden ring;
Let him bring us a glass of beer,
And the better we shall sing.
_Love and joy, &c._

Bring us out a table,
And spread it with a cloth;
Bring us out a mouldy cheese
And some of your Christmas loaf.
_Love and joy, &c._

God bless the Master of this house,
Likewise the Mistress too,
And all the little children
That round the table go.
_Love and joy come to you,
And to you your wassail too,
And God bless you, and send you
A happy New Year._

_Old English_

Ring Out, Wild Bells

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light:
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow;
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind,
For those that here we see no more;
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.

* * * * *

Ring out old shapes of foul disease,
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.

ALFRED TENNYSON

New Year's Eve, 1850

This is the midnight of the century,--hark!
Through aisle and arch of Godminster have gone
Twelve throbs that tolled the zenith of the dark,
And mornward now the starry hands move on;
"Mornward!" the angelic watchers say,
"Passed is the sorest trial;
No plot of man can stay
The hand upon the dial;
Night is the dark stem of the lily Day."

If we, who watched in valleys here below,
Toward streaks, misdeemed of morn, our faces turned
When Vulcan glares set all the east aglow,--
We are not poorer that we wept and yearned;
Though earth swing wide from God's intent,
And though no man nor nation
Will move with full consent
In heavenly gravitation,
Yet by one Sun is every orbit bent.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

Rejoicings upon the New Year's Coming of Age

The Old Year being dead, and the New Year coming of age, which he does, by Calendar Law, as soon as the breath is out of the old gentleman's body, nothing would serve the young spark but he must give a dinner upon the occasion, to which all the Days in the year were invited. The Festivals, whom he deputed as his stewards, were mightily taken with the notion. They had been engaged time out of mind, they said, in providing mirth and good cheer for mortals below; and it was time they should have a taste of their own bounty. It was stiffly debated among them whether the Fasts should be admitted. Some said the appearance of such lean, starved guests, with their mortified faces, would pervert the ends of the meeting. But the objection was overruled by Christmas Day, who had a design upon Ash Wednesday (as you shall hear), and a mighty desire to see how the old Domine would behave himself in his cups. Only the Vigils were requested to come with their lanterns, to light the gentlefolks home at night.

All the Days came to their day. Covers were provided for three hundred and sixty-five guests at the principal table; with an occasional knife and fork at the side-board for the Twenty-Ninth of February.

I should have told you, that cards of invitation had been issued. The carriers were the Hours; twelve little, merry, whirligig foot-pages, as you should desire to see, that went all round, and found out the persons invited well enough, with the exception of Easter Day, Shrove Tuesday, and a few such Moveables, who had lately shifted their quarters.

Well, they all met at last--foul Days, fine Days, all sorts of Days, and a rare din they made of it. There was nothing but, Hail! fellow Day, well met--brother Day--sister Day,--only Lady Day kept a little on the aloof, and seemed somewhat scornful. Yet some said Twelfth Day cut her out and out, for she came in a tiffany suit, white and gold, like a queen on a frost-cake, all royal, glittering, and Epiphanous. The rest came, some in green, some in white--but old Lent and his family were not yet out of mourning. Rainy Days came in dripping; and sunshiny Days helped them to change their stockings. Wedding Day was there in his marriage finery, a little worse for wear. Pay Day came late, as he always does; and Doomsday sent word--he might be expected.

April Fool (as my young lord's jester) took upon himself to marshal the guests, and wild work he made with it. It would have posed old Erra Pater to have found out any given Day in the year to erect a scheme upon--good Days, bad Days, were so shuffled together, to the confounding of all sober horoscopy.

He had stuck the Twenty-First of June next to the Twenty-Second of December, and the former looked like a Maypole siding a marrow-bone. Ash Wednesday got wedged in (as was concerted) betwixt Christmas and Lord Mayor's Days. Lord! how he laid about him! Nothing but barons of beef and turkeys would go down with him--to the great greasing and detriment of his new sackcloth bib and tucker. And still Christmas Day was at his elbow, plying him with the wassail-bowl, till he roared, and hiccupp'd, and protested there was no faith in dried ling, but commended it to the devil for a sour, windy, acrimonious, censorious, hy-po-crit-crit-critical mess, and no dish for a gentleman. Then he dipt his fist into the middle of the great custard that stood before his left-hand neighbour, and daubed his hungry beard all over with it, till you would have taken him for the Last Day in December, it so hung in icicles.

At another part of the table, Shrove Tuesday was helping the Second of September to some cock broth,--which courtesy the latter returned with the delicate thigh of a hen pheasant--so that there was no love lost for that matter. The Last of Lent was spunging upon Shrove-tide's pancakes; which April Fool perceiving, told him that he did well, for pancakes were proper to a good fry-day.

In another part, a hubbub arose about the Thirtieth of January, who, it seems, being a sour, puritanic character, that thought nobody's meat good or sanctified enough for him, had smuggled into the room a calf's head, which he had had cooked at home for that purpose, thinking to feast thereon incontinently; but as it lay in the dish, March Manyweathers, who is a very fine lady, and subject to the meagrims, screamed out there was a "human head in the platter," and raved about Herodias' daughter to that degree, that the obnoxious viand was obliged to be removed; nor did she recover her stomach till she had gulped down a Restorative, confected of Oak Apple, which the merry Twenty-Ninth of May always carries about with him for that purpose.

The King's health being called for after this, a notable dispute arose between the Twelfth of August (a zealous old Whig gentlewoman) and the Twenty-Third of April (a new-fangled lady of the Tory stamp) as to which of them should have the honour to propose it. August grew hot upon the matter, affirming time out of mind the prescriptive right to have lain with her, till her rival had basely supplanted her; whom she represented as little better than a kept mistress, who went about in fine clothes, while she (the legitimate Birthday) had scarcely a rag, etc.

April Fool, being made mediator, confirmed the right, in the strongest form of words, to the appellant, but decided for peace' sake, that the exercise of it should remain with the present possessor. At the time, he slily rounded the first lady in the ear, that an action might lie against the Crown for bi-geny.

It beginning to grow a little duskish, Candlemas lustily bawled out for lights, which was opposed by all the Days, who protested against burning daylight. Then fair water was handed round in silver ewers, and the same lady was observed to take an unusual time in Washing herself.

May Day, with that sweetness which is peculiar to her, in a neat speech proposing the health of the founder, crowned her goblet (and by her example the rest of the company) with garlands. This being done, the lordly New Year, from the upper end of the table, in a cordial but somewhat lofty tone, returned thanks. He felt proud on an occasion of meeting so many of his worthy father's late tenants, promised to improve their farms, and at the same time to abate (if anything was found unreasonable) in their rents.

At the mention of this, the four Quarter Days involuntarily looked at each other, and smiled; April Fool whistled to an old tune of "New Brooms"; and a surly old rebel at the farther end of the table (who was discovered to be no other than the Fifth of November) muttered out, distinctly enough to be heard by the whole company, words to this effect--that "when the old one is gone, he is a fool that looks for a better." Which rudeness of his, the guests resenting, unanimously voted his expulsion; and the malcontent was thrust out neck and heels into the cellar, as the properest place for such a _boutefeu_ and firebrand as he had shown himself to be.

Order being restored--the young lord (who, to say truth, had been a little ruffled, and put beside his oratory) in as few, and yet as obliging words as possible, assured them of entire welcome; and, with a graceful turn, singling out poor Twenty-Ninth of February, that had sate all this while mumchance at the side-board, begged to couple his health with that of the good company before him--which he drank accordingly; observing, that he had not seen his honest face any time these four years, with a number of endearing expressions besides. At the same time removing the solitary Day from the forlorn seat which had been assigned him, he stationed him at his own board, somewhere between the Greek Calends and Latter Lammas.

Ash Wednesday, being now called upon for a song, with his eyes fast stuck in his head, and as well as the Canary he had swallowed would give him leave, struck up a Carol, which Christmas Day had taught him for the nounce; and was followed by the latter, who gave "Miserere" in fine style, hitting off the mumping notes and lengthened drawl of Old Mortification with infinite humour. April Fool swore they had exchanged conditions; but Good Friday was observed to look extremely grave; and Sunday held her fan before her face that she might not be seen to smile.

Shrove-tide, Lord Mayor's Day, and April Fool next joined in a glee--

Which is the properest day to drink?

in which all the Days chiming in, made a merry burden.

They next fell to quibbles and conundrums. The question being proposed, who had the greatest number of followers--the Quarter Days said, there could be no question as to that; for they had all the creditors in the world dogging their heels. But April Fool gave it in favour of the Forty Days before Easter; because the debtors in all cases outnumbered the creditors, and they kept Lent all the year.

All this while Valentine's Day kept courting pretty May, who sate next him, slipping amorous billets-doux under the table, till the Dog Days (who are naturally of a warm constitution) began to be jealous, and to bark and rage exceedingly. April Fool, who likes a bit of sport above measure, and had some pretensions to the lady besides, as being but a cousin once removed,--clapped and halloo'd them on; and as fast as their indignation cooled, those mad wags, the Ember Days, were at it with their bellows, to blow it into a flame; and all was in a ferment, till old Madam Septuagesima (who boasts herself the Mother of the Days) wisely diverted the conversation with a tedious tale of the lovers which she could reckon when she was young, and of one Master Rogation Day in particular, who was for ever putting the question to her; but she kept him at a distance, as the chronicle would tell--by which I apprehend she meant the Almanack. Then she rambled on to the Days that were gone, the good old Days, and so to the Days before the Flood--which plainly showed her old head to be little better than crazed and doited.

Day being ended, the Days called for their cloaks and greatcoats, and took their leaves. Lord Mayor's Day went off in a Mist, as usual; Shortest Day in a deep black Fog, that wrapt the little gentleman all round like a hedgehog. Two Vigils--so watchmen are called in heaven--saw Christmas Day safe home--they had been used to the business before. Another Vigil--a stout, sturdy patrole, called the Eve of St. Christopher--seeing Ash Wednesday in a condition little better than he should be--e'en whipt him over his shoulders, pick-a-back fashion, and Old Mortification went floating home singing--

On the bat's back do I fly,

and a number of old snatches besides, between drunk and sober, but very few Aves or Penitentiaries (you may believe me) were among them. Longest Days set off westward in beautiful crimson and gold--the rest, some in one fashion, some in another; but Valentine and pretty May took their departure together in one of the prettiest silvery twilights a Lover's Day could wish to set in.

CHARLES LAMB

New Year's Rites in the Highlands

New Year's Day was not in pre-Reformation times associated with any special rites. Hence Scottish Reformers, while subjecting to discipline those who observed Christmas, were willing that New Year's Day should be appropriated to social pleasures. Towards the closing hour of the 31st December each family prepared a hot pint of wassail bowl of which all the members might drink to each other's prosperity as the new year began. Hot pint usually consisted of a mixture of spiced and sweetened ale with an infusion of whiskey. Along with the drinking of the hot pint was associated the practice of _first foot_, or a neighborly greeting. After the year had commenced, each one hastened to his neighbor's house bearing a small gift; it was deemed "unlucky" to enter "empty handed."

With New Year's Day were in some portions of the Highlands associated peculiar rites. At Strathdown the junior anointed in bed the elder members of the household with water, which the evening before had been silently drawn from "the dead and living food." Thereafter they kindled in each room, after closing the chimneys, bunches of juniper. These rites, the latter attended with much discomfort, were held to ward off pestilence and sorcery.

The direction of the wind on New Year's Eve was supposed to rule the weather during the approaching year. Hence the rhyme:

If New Year's Eve night-wind blow south,
It betokeneth warmth and growth;
If west, much milk,--and fish in the sea:
If north, much cold and storms there will be;
If east, the trees will bear much fruit;
If north-east, flee it, man and brute.

CHARLES ROGERS in _Social Life in Scotland_

The Chinese New Year

The anniversary of the New Year in China follows the variations of a lunar year, falling in early February or toward the end of January; the rejoicings are continued with great spirit for a week or more.

On the last day of the old year, accounts are settled, debts cancelled, and books carefully balanced in every mercantile establishment from the largest merchants or bankers, down to the itinerant venders of cooked food and vegetable-mongers. In every house the swanpaun, or calculating machine, is in use. This nation does not write down figures, but reckons with surprising rapidity and accuracy by the aid of a small frame of wood crossed with wires like columns and small balls strung on them for counters.

It is considered disgraceful, and almost equivalent to an act of bankruptcy, if all accounts are not settled the last day of the old year; consequently it frequently happens that articles of ornament or curiosity can be purchased at low rates in the last week of the year from the desire of merchants to sacrifice their stock rather than go without ready money. In all courts the official seals are locked in strong-boxes, till the holiday is at an end.

On the last day of the old year is observed the ancient custom of surrounding the furnace. A feast is spread in great form before males in one room, females in another; underneath the table exactly in the centre is placed a brazier filled with lighted wood or charcoal; fireworks are discharged, gilt paper burned, and the feast eaten, the younger sons serving the head of the house. After the repast there is more burning of gilt paper, and the ashes are divided, while still smouldering, into twelve heaps, which are anxiously watched. The twelve heaps are each allotted to a month, and it is believed that from the length of time it takes each heap to die completely out, can be predicted the changes of rain or drought which will be of benefit to the crops or the reverse.

The first celebration of the New Year is the offering _to heaven and earth_. A table in the principal entrance is spread with a bucket of rice, five or ten bowls of different vegetables (no meats) ten cups of tea, ten cups of wine, two large red candles, and three sticks of common incense or one large stick of a more fragrant kind. In the wooden bucket holding the rice are stuck flowers or bits of fragrant cedar, and ten pairs of chopsticks. On the sticks are laid mock money only used at this season; to one of the sticks is suspended by a red string an almanac of the coming year; and near the centre of the table is always displayed a bowl of oranges. Then after a display of fireworks each member of the family approaches and performs homage by a ceremony of triple bowings. This is succeeded by ceremonies of veneration to ancestors and tokens of respect and reverence to living ancestors or relatives--but to the living neither incense, nor candle nor mock money is offered,--not even food except the omnipresent loose skinned orange whose colloquial name is the same as the term for "fortunate."

On New Year's Day, the houses are decorated with inscriptions which are hung at either side of the door, on the pillars or frames, and in the interior of the houses; some are suspended from long poles attached to the outside of the house. The color of the paper indicates whether during the preceding year the inmates of the house have lost a relative and if so the degree of the relation of the dead person to those within. Those who are not in mourning use a brilliant crimson paper; in many cases the word _happiness_ is repeated innumerable times; on some are more ambitious mottoes:--"May I be so learned as to bear in my memory the substance of three millions of volumes," "May I know the affairs of the whole universe for six thousand years," "I will cheat no man." The monasteries declare "Our lives are pure" and the nunneries "We are grandmothers in heart."

In some parts of China there prevails a curious custom among mendicants of electing a chief who goes to each shopkeeper and asks a donation. If that received be liberal, a piece of red paper affixed to the merchant's doorway exempts him from applications from the begging fraternity for one year. During this term of immunity there will be no annoyance from the clatter on his doorpost of the beggars' bamboo.

For the time being, business is suspended, tribunals are closed, houses are decorated, gifts interchanged, large sums expended on fireworks, and the celebration reaches full swing on the night of the Feast of Lanterns, when every dwelling in the Kingdom from the mud-walled bamboo hut, to the Emperor's palace with marble halls, are all illuminated with lanterns of every size and shape. At the end of the feast a great pyrotechnic display takes place, in the courtyard of the better class of residences, in the streets before the abodes of the middle and lower classes, each one trying to outdo the year before in the magnificence of the display, the strangeness of the devices, and the brilliancy of the fireworks. The air is illumined with millions of sparks, and the eye rests upon thousands of grotesque monsters outlined in the many colored flames.

H. C. SIRR in _China and the Chinese_

New Year's Gifts in Thessaly

No good Thessalian would think of being absent from the liturgy on New Year's morning, and no good peasant would think of leaving behind him the pomegranate which has been exposed to the stars all night, and which they take to the church for the priest to bless. On his return home the master of each house dashes this pomegranate on the floor as he crosses his threshold, and says as he does so, "May as many good-lucks come to my household as there are pips in this pomegranate;" and apostrophizing, so to speak, the demons of the house, he adds, "Away with you, fleas, and bugs, and evil words; and within this house may health, happiness, and the good things of this world reign supreme!"

In like manner, no good housewife would neglect to distribute sweets to her children on New Year's morning, considering that by eating them they will secure for themselves a sweet career for the rest of the year.

And many other little superstitions of a kindred nature are considered essential to the well-being of the family. In one house we entered on New Year's Day we were presented with pieces of a curious and exceedingly nasty leavened loaf, and were told that this is the New Year's cake which every family makes; into it is dropped a coin, and he who gets the coin in his slice will be the luckiest during the coming year. Every member of the family has a slice given to him--even the tiny baby, who has not the remotest chance of consuming all his; and then besides the family slices, two large ones are always cut off the cake and set on one side; one of these is said to be "for the house," which nobody eats, but when it is quite dry it is put on a shelf near the sacred pictures, which occupy a corner in every home, however humble, and is dedicated to the saints--the household gods of the old days. The other slice is for the poor, who go around with baskets on their arms on New Year's Day and collect from each household the portion which they know has been put aside for them.

Every Thessalian, however poor, gives a New Year's gift "for good luck," they say; and these gifts curiously enough are called ἐπινομίδες--a word which we find Athenænus using as a translation of the Roman term _strena_ for the same gift, which still exists in the French _étrennes_ and Italian _strenne_. Even as in ancient Rome gifts were given on this day _bona ominis causa_ so did we find ourselves constantly presented with something on New Year's Day--nuts, apples, dried figs, and things of a like nature, which caused our pockets to become inconveniently crowded. I fancy it was much the same in Roman days and probably earlier as it is now in out of the way corners of Greece. We know how on New Year's Day clients sent presents to their patrons--slaves to the lords, friends to friends, and the people to the Emperor--and that Caligula, who was never a rich man, took advantage of this custom and made known that on New Year's Day he wanted a dower for his daughter, which resulted in such piles of gold being brought that he walked barefoot upon them at his palace door.

The custom of giving New Year's gifts in Rome grew as great a nuisance as wedding presents bid fair to become with us, and sumptuary laws had to be passed to restrict the lavish expenditure in them, and the earlier Christian divines took occasion to abuse them hotly, St. Augustine calling New Year's gifts "diabolical" and Chrysostom preaching that the first of the year was a "Satanic extravagance."

Wishing to Christianize a pagan custom as they always tried to do, these earlier divines invented Christmas gifts as a substitute. Wherefore we unfortunate dwellers in the West have the survival of both Christmas and New Year's gifts; in Greece Christmas gifts are unknown; but there exists not in Greece a man, however poor, who does not make an effort to give his friends a gift on the day of the Kalends.

J. THEODORE BENT

"Smashing" in the New Year

The Old Year went out with much such a racket as we make nowadays, but of quite a different kind. We did not blow the New Year in, we "smashed" it in. When it was dark on New Year's Eve, we stole out with all the cracked and damaged crockery of the year that had been hoarded for the purpose and, hieing ourselves to some favorite neighbor's door, broke our pots against it. Then we ran, but not very far or very fast, for it was part of the game that if one was caught at it, he was to be taken in and treated to hot doughnuts. The smashing was a mark of favor, and the citizen who had most pots broken against his door was the most popular man in town. When I was in the Latin School a cranky burgomaster, whose door had been freshly painted, gave orders to the watchmen to stop it, and gave them an unhappy night, for they were hard put to it to find a way it was safe to look, with the streets full of the best citizens in town, and their wives and daughters, sneaking singly by with bulging coats on their way to salute a friend. That was when our mothers, those who were not out smashing in the New Year, came out strong after the fashion of mothers. They baked more doughnuts than ever that night, and beckoned the watchman in to the treat; and there he sat, blissfully deaf while the street rang with the thunderous salvos of our raids; until it was discovered that the burgomaster himself was on post, when there was a sudden rush from kitchen doors and a great scurrying through the streets that grew strangely silent.

The town had its revenge, however. The burgomaster, returning home in the midnight hour, stumbled in his gate over a discarded Christmas-tree hung full of old boots and many black and sooty pots that went down round him with a great smash as he upset it, so that his family came running out in alarm to find him sprawling in the midst of the biggest celebration of all. His dignity suffered a shock which he never quite got over. But it killed the New Year's fun, too. For he was really a good fellow, and then he was the burgomaster and chief of police to boot. I suspect the fact was that the pot-smashing had run its course. Perhaps the supply of pots was giving out; we began to use tinware more about that time. That was the end of it, anyhow.

JACOB RIIS in _The Old Town_

New Year Calls in Old New York

From old Dutch times to the middle of the nineteenth century New Year's Day in New York was devoted to an universal interchange of visits. Old friendships were renewed, family differences settled, a hearty welcome extended even to strangers of presentable appearance.

The following is an entry in Tyrone Powers the actor's diary for January 1, 1834: "On this day from an early hour every door in New York is open and all the good things possessed by the inmates paraded in lavish profusion. Every sort of vehicle is put in requisition. At an early hour a gentleman of whom I had a slight knowledge entered my room, accompanied by an elderly person I had never before seen, and who, on being named, excused himself for adopting such a frank mode of making my acquaintance, which he was pleased to add he much desired, and at once requested me to fall in with the custom of the day, whose privilege he had thus availed himself of, and accompany him on a visit to his family.

"I was the last man on earth likely to decline an offer made in such a spirit; so entering his carriage, which was waiting, we drove to his house on Broadway, where, after being presented to a very amiable lady, his wife, and a pretty gentle-looking girl, his daughter, I partook of a sumptuous luncheon, drank a glass of champagne, and on the arrival of other visitors, made my bow, well pleased with my visit.

"My host now begged me to make a few calls with him, explaining, as we drove along, the strict observances paid to this day throughout the State, and tracing the excellent custom to the early Dutch colonists. I paid several calls in company with my new friend, and at each place met a hearty welcome, when my companion suggested that I might have some compliments to make on my own account, and so leaving me, begged me to consider his carriage perfectly at my disposal. I left a card or two and made a couple of hurried visits, then returned to my hotel to think over the many beneficial effects likely to grow out of such a charitable custom which makes even the stranger sensible of the benevolent influence of this kindly day, and to wish for its continued observance."

At the period of which Power speaks there were great feasts spread in many houses, and the traditions of tremendous Dutch eating and drinking were faithfully observed. Special houses were noted for particular forms of entertainment. At one it was eggnog, at another rum punch; at this one, pickled oysters, at that, boned turkey, or marvellous chocolate, or perfect Mocha coffee; or for the select _cognoscenti_ a drop of old Madeira as delicate in flavor as the texture of the glass from which it was sipped. At all houses there were the New Year's cakes, in the form of an Egyptian _cartouche_, and in later and more degenerate days relays of champagne-bottles appeared,--the coming in of the lower empire.

Then followed the gradual breaking down of all the lines of conventionality into a wild and unseemly riot of visits. New Year's Day took on the character of a rabid and untamed race against time. A procession, each of whose component parts was made up of two or three young men in an open barouche, with a pair of steaming horses and a driver more or less under the influences of the hilarity of the day, would rattle from one house to another all day long. The visitors would jump out of the carriage, rush into the house, and reappear in a miraculously short space of time. The ceremony of calling was a burlesque. There was a noisy, hilarious greeting, a glass of wine was swallowed hurriedly, everybody shook hands all around, and the callers dashed out, rushed into the carriage, and were driven hurriedly to the next house.

A reaction naturally set in which ended in the almost complete disuse of the custom of New Year's Calls.

W. S. WALSH in _Curiosities of Popular Customs_

Sylvester Abend in Davos

It is ten o'clock upon Sylvester Abend, or New Year's Eve. Herr Buol sits with his wife at the head of his long table. His family and serving-folk are around him. There is his mother, with little Ursula, his child, upon her knee. The old lady is the mother of four comely daughters and nine stalwart sons, the eldest of whom is now a grizzled man. Besides our host, four of the brothers are here to-night; the handsome melancholy Georg, who is so gentle in his speech; Simeon, with his diplomatic face; Florian, the student of medicine; and my friend, colossal-breasted Christian. Palmy came a little later, worried with many cares, but happy to his heart's core. No optimist was ever more convinced of his philosophy than Palmy. After them, below the salt, were ranged the knechts and porters, the marmiton from the kitchen, and innumerable maids. The board was tessellated with plates of birnen-brod and eier-brod, kuchli and cheese and butter; and Georg stirred grampampuli in a mighty metal bowl. For the uninitiated, it may be needful to explain these Davos delicacies. Birnen-brod is what the Scotch would call a "bun," or massive cake, composed of sliced pears, almonds, spices, and a little flour. Eier-brod is a saffron-coloured sweet bread, made with eggs; and kuchli is a kind of pastry, crisp and flimsy, fashioned into various devices of cross, star, and scroll. Grampampuli is simply brandy burnt with sugar, the most unsophisticated punch I ever drank from tumblers. The frugal people of Davos, who live on bread and cheese and dried meat all the year, indulge themselves but once with these unwonted dainties in the winter.

The occasion was cheerful, and yet a little solemn. The scene was feudal. For these Buols are the scions of a warrior race:--

"A race illustrious for heroic deeds;
Humbled, but degraded."

During the six centuries through which they have lived nobles in Davos, they have sent forth scores of fighting men to foreign lands, ambassadors to France and Venice and the Milanese, governors to Chiavenna and Bregaglia and the much-contested Valtelline. Members of their house are Counts of Buol-Schauenstein in Austria, Freiherrs of Muhlingen and Berenberg in the now German Empire. They keep the patent of nobility conferred on them by Henri IV. Their ancient coat--parted per pale azure and argent, with a dame of the fourteenth century bearing in her hand a rose, all counterchanged--is carved in wood and monumental marble on the churches and old houses hereabouts. And from immemorial antiquity the Buol of Davos has sat thus on Sylvester Abend with family and folk around him, summoned from alp and snowy field to drink grampampuli and break the birnen-brod.

These rites performed, the men and maids began to sing--brown arms lounging on the table, and red hands folded in white aprons--serious at first in hymn-like cadences, then breaking into wilder measures with a jodel at the close. There is a measured solemnity in the performance, which strikes the stranger as somewhat comic. But the singing was good; the voices strong and clear in tone, no hesitation and no shirking of the melody. It was clear that the singers enjoyed the music for its own sake, with half-shut eyes, as they take dancing, solidly, with deep-drawn breath, sustained and indefatigable. But eleven struck; and the two Christians, my old friend and Palmy, said we should be late for church. They had promised to take me with them to see bell-ringing in the tower. All the young men of the village meet, and draw lots in the Stube of the Rathhaus. One party tolls the old year out, the other rings the new year in. He who comes last is sconced three litres of Veltliner for the company. This jovial fine was ours to pay to-night.

When we came into the air we found a bitter frost; the whole sky clouded over; a north wind whirling snow from alp and forest through the murky gloom. The benches and broad walnut tables of the Rathhaus were crowded with men in shaggy homespun of brown and grey frieze. Its low wooden roof and walls enclosed an atmosphere of smoke, denser than the eternal snow-drift. But our welcome was hearty, and we found a score of friends. Titanic Fopp, whose limbs are Michelangelesque in length; spectacled Morosani; the little tailor Kramer, with a French horn on his knees; the puckered forehead of the Baumeister; the Troll-shaped postman; peasants and woodmen, known on far excursions upon pass and upland valley. Not one but carried on his face the memory of winter strife with avalanche and snow-drift, of horses struggling through Fluela whirlwinds, and wine-casks tugged across Bernina, and haystacks guided down precipitous gullies at thundering speed 'twixt pine and pine, and larches felled in distant glens beside the frozen watercourses. Here we were, all met together for one hour from our several homes and occupations, to welcome in the year with clinked glasses and cries of Prosit Neujahr!

The tolling bells above us stopped. Our turn had come. Out into the snowy air we tumbled, beneath the row of wolves' heads that adorn the pent-house roof. A few steps brought us to the still God's acre, where the snow lay deep and cold upon high-mounded graves of many generations. We crossed it silently, bent our heads to the low Gothic arch, and stood within the tower. It was thick darkness there. But far above, the bells began again to clash and jangle confusedly, with volleys of demoniac joy. Successive flights of ladders, each ending in a giddy platform hung across the gloom, climb to the height of some hundred and fifty feet; and all their rungs were crusted with frozen snow, deposited by trampling boots. For up and down these stairs, ascending and descending, moved other than angels--the frieze-jacketed Burschen, Grisens bears, rejoicing in their exercise, exhilarated with the tingling noise of beaten metal. We reached the first room safely, guided by firm-footed Christian, whose one candle just defined the rough walls and the slippery steps. There we found a band of boys pulling ropes that set the bells in motion. But our destination was not reached. One more aerial ladder, perpendicular in darkness, brought us swiftly to the home of sound. It is a small square chamber, where the bells are hung, filled with the interlacement of enormous beams, and pierced to north and south by open windows, from whose parapets I saw the village and the valley spread beneath. The fierce wind hurried through it, charged with snow, and its narrow space thronged with men. Men on the platform, men on the window-sills, men grappling the bells with iron arms, men brushing by to reach the stairs, crossing, re-crossing, shouldering their mates, drinking red wine from gigantic beakers, exploding crackers, firing squibs, shouting and yelling in corybantic chorus. They yelled and shouted, one could see it by their open mouths and glittering eyes; but not a sound from human lungs could reach our ears. The overwhelming incessant thunder of the bells drowned all. It thrilled the tympanum, ran through the marrow of the spine, vibrated in the inmost entrails. Yet the brain was only steadied and excited by this sea of brazen noise. After a few moments I knew the place and felt at home in it. Then I enjoyed a spectacle which sculptors might have envied. For they ring the bells in Davos after this fashon:--The lads below set them going with ropes. The men above climb in pairs on ladders to the beams from which they are suspended. Two mighty pine-trees, roughly squared and built into the walls, extend from side to side across the belfry. Another, from which the bells hang, connects these massive trunks at right angles. Just where the central beam is wedged into the two parallel supports, the ladders reach from each side of the belfry, so that, bending from the higher rung of the ladder, and leaning over, stayed upon the lateral beam, each pair of men can keep one bell in movement with their hands. Each comrade plants one leg upon the ladder, and sets the other knee firmly athwart the horizontal pine. Then round each other's waist they twine left arm and right. The two have thus become one man. Right arm and left are free to grasp the bell's horns, sprouting at its crest beneath the beam. With a grave rhythmic motion, bending sideward in a close embrace, swaying and returning to their centre from the well-knit loins, they drive the force of each strong muscle into the vexed bell. The impact is earnest at first, but soon it becomes frantic. The men take something from each other of exalted enthusiasm. This efflux of their combined energies inspires them and exasperates the mighty resonance of metal which they rule. They are lost in a trance of what approximates to dervish passion--so thrilling is the surge of sound, so potent are the rhythms they obey. Men come and tug them by the heels. One grasps the starting thews upon their calves. Another is impatient for their place. But they strain still, locked together, and forgetful of the world. At length, they have enough: then slowly, clingingly, unclasp, turn round with gazing eyes, and are resumed, sedately, into the diurnal round of common life. Another pair is in their room upon the beam.

The Englishman who saw those things stood looking up, enveloped in his ulster with the grey cowl thrust upon his forehead, like a monk. One candle cast a grotesque shadow of him on the plastered wall. And when his chance came, though he was but a weakling, he too climbed and for some moments hugged the beam, and felt the madness of the swinging bell. Descending, he wondered long and strangely whether he ascribed too much of feeling to the men he watched. But no, that was impossible. There are emotions deeply seated in the joy of exercise, when the body is brought into play, and masses move in concert, of which the subject is but half conscious. Music and dance, and the delirium of the battle or the chase, act thus upon spontaneous natures. The mystery of rhythm and associated energy and blood tingling in sympathy is here. It lies at the root of man's most tyrannous instinctive impulses.

It was past one when we reached home, and now a meditative man might well have gone to bed. But no one thinks of sleeping on Sylvester Abend. So there followed bowls of punch in one friend's room, where English, French, and German blent together in convivial Babel; and flasks of old Montagner in another. Palmy, at this period, wore an archdeacon's hat, and smoked a church-warden's pipe; and neither were his own, nor did he derive anything ecclesiastical or Anglican from the association. Late in the morning we must sally forth, they said, and roam the town. For it is the custom here on New Year's night to greet acquaintances, and ask for hospitality, and no one may deny these self-invited guests. We turned out again into the grey snow-swept gloom, a curious Comus--not at all like Greeks, for we had neither torches in our hands nor rose-wreaths to suspend upon a lady's door-posts....

However, upon this occasion, though we had winter wind enough, and cold enough, there was not much love in the business. My arm was firmly clenched in Christian Buol's, and Christian Palmy came behind, trolling out songs in Italian dialect, with still recurring canaille choruses, of which the facile rhymes seemed mostly made on a prolonged amu-u-u-r. It is noticeable that Italian ditties are especially designed for fellows shouting in the streets at night.... The tall church-tower and spire loomed up above us in grey twilight. The tireless wind still swept thin snow from fell and forest. But the frenzied bells had sunk into their twelve-month's slumber, which shall be broken only by decorous tollings at less festive times. I wondered whether they were tingling still with the heart-throbs and with the pressure of those many arms? Was their old age warmed, as mine was, with that gust of life--the young men who had clung to them like bees to lily-bells, and shaken all their locked-up tone and shrillness into the wild winter air? Alas! how many generations of the young have handled them; and they are still there, frozen in their belfry; and the young grow middle-aged, and old, and die at last; and the bells they grappled in their lust of manhood toll them to their graves, on which the tireless wind will, winter after winter, sprinkle snow from alps and forests which they knew.

JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS