New Year’s Customs from Around the World

Excerpt #1 from Ex Mentis Saxonicum, available in paperback (140 pp.) from the author (rgferrell@gmail.com)

Whilst rummaging randomly through some of my notes (mostly B flats and G sharps), I lost sight of the horizon and plummeted headfirst into a pile of particularly dank pages. After close inspection and some drying in the sunlight, they proved to be cryptic little snatches concerning the New Year’s customs followed by various peoples at various periods in history. At least, I think this is what they’re about. They may be references to the use of copper bedpans during the Crimean war, or perhaps an analysis of the behavior patterns of Hoopoes (Upupa epops) during courtship flights over the coast of Brittany, but I’m fairly certain that they’ve got something to do with New Year’s customs. I’m going to present them, or as much of them as I can decipher, as though that were the case. If they don’t seem to make sense to you in this context, imagine how I feel.

Some ancient peoples put out fires on New Year’s, only to have them started right back up again by other equally ancient peoples. This behavior seems pointless, but it probably helped to while away the tedious hours during the long, bleak winters with nothing to eat but wooly mammoth jerky and yak’s milk. The ancient Romans gave each other gifts of branches from sacred trees as New Year’s gifts. Or at least they told each other they were from sacred trees. More likely they were wrenched off that sickly old shrub out behind the aqueduct when it finally succumbed to root rot. It was never a good idea to trust Romans on the subject of forestry. It was never a good idea to trust Romans.

They also gave each other gold-covered coins or nuts with the likeness of the two-faced god Janus engraved on them. I don’t know how one engraves on a nut, but I expect it is messy and frustrating, leading most probably to the fed up gift-giver simply chucking the whole project out the window and substituting a small rind of goat’s cheese with the image of Elvis outlined on it in mold. We’ve all done that, at one time or another.

The ancient Persians gave each other mice and catnip. No, wait, the ancient Persians gave each other eggs, to suggest productivity, or possibly to increase their calcium intake. All eggs suggest to me is omelet, but maybe I’m not reading this the right way. Maybe we’re not thinking of the same kind of eggs. Maybe I’d better shut up and move on before I get further away from the topic.

The Druids got rid of the mistletoe that had been accumulating on their trees all year by handing it out to their Celtic parishioners and calling it ‘sacred.’ "Here, my son, I bless you with this sprig of poisonous plant parasite. No, don’t hold it that way; you’ll put an eye out."

In 43 A. D. the untrustworthy Romans, who had been sailing around for quite a while looking for a new supply of sacred trees, landed in Britain, sore and stiff from the cramped voyage with nothing to eat but moldy cheese and aborted nut-sculptures. It took only 1,200 years for the progressive and quick-witted inhabitants to adopt the Roman custom of rulers asking their populace for New Year’s gifts. This custom died out in Rome because the royal palaces got so filled with dead tree branches that it became impossible to carry out any of the functions of government. In the British Isles, however, the rulers were a bit more clever, and demanded things like gold and jewelry as gifts. This was a period (roughly 1250 A. D. up to last Tuesday) of great prosperity for the British Crown, although the nut supply did run low on several occasions.

In Scotland the New Year brings a peculiar form of insanity (the Scots have as many varieties of insanity as Eskimos have of snow) that is characterized by collecting juniper and water at sunset, assigning different colors to the wind depending on the direction from which it blows, avoiding cats, beggars, women, or redheads as unlucky, and giving each other gifts of coal and whiskey. To make matters even worse, it is also considered bad luck to engage in marriage proposals, break glass, spin flax, sweep, or carry out garbage on New Year’s Eve. I’m a Scot on my mother’s side. Can you tell?

Down in Somerset, meanwhile, the largest tree that can be found is called the Apple Tree Man, for no readily apparent reason, especially given that it is not a man, at all. Apple cider is poured on its roots and lower branches, while cake and toasted bread soaked in cider are hung from the branches. Shouting, banging tin plates, firing shotguns, and splitting the bark of the tree are all carried out, supposedly to drive away evil spirits. I suspect that the enthusiasm, if not the deftness, with which these rituals are carried out is directly proportional to how much wassailing goes on immediately prior to the ceremonies. Songs and toasts are made with considerable abandon. Later, bands of men called (imaginatively) wassails go from house to house with a wassail bowl collecting money. There is evidently nothing that can be done about this.

Many American colonists celebrated the New Year by firing guns into the air and shouting. These early settlers had an ingenious arrangement whereby the colonists on the first floor did the shooting, which was followed immediately by those on the second floor shouting, often accompanied by a loud thumping or flopping. New Year’s wasn’t by all accounts a really safe time to be higher in elevation than the rest of the celebrants. Another custom of this period was to choose a random passage from whatever translation of the Bible happened to suit your lifestyle best and then use various parts of it to predict what would happen in the coming year. This practice eventually evolved into the Congressional budget process still in use today.

I like to celebrate New Year’s by stuffing myself silly and then sleeping the rest of the day, but then I’m just a superstitious old fool.