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Newspaper
Boston Post
Location
Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America
Date
Dec 28, 1918
Page
16
Wild New Year scenes in New York featured racey house calls, hurried greetings, and social invasions by visitors including workers and politicians. Paris similarly celebrated with family gatherings, flowers, cards, and festive crowds as beggars roam freely and post offices run hard to handle the flood of greetings.
England and the northern nations long held a custom to drink health at the turn of the year. The wassail bowl linked family health to neighbors as households shared provisions and visitors entered as the first foot for luck. Across New York and Philadelphia crowds greeted the new year with bells, horns, and jazz, though much of the ancient practice has faded.
William Jethro Spudd unveils a list of New Year resolutions, only to face ribbing from son William Jr and daughter Winifred. Mrs. Spudd keeps knitting as the talk turns humorous about willpower and past failures in keeping vows.
New Year's Day customs are described across Europe from ancient Rome to Scotland. The piece notes gift exchanges in Rome, persistent practices in France and Latin countries, Belgian children chasing sugar riches, Edinburgh youths kissing, Bromyard and South Scotland fountain rituals, and New Year feasting, burning of old year fires, and superstitions about Bible luck, lamps, and waste water.
The piece explains that Chinese New Year favors visiting by social ranks and greetings of joy, with streets brightened by lanterns and silk attire. It notes the Japanese three day limit but longer practice, debt settlement at year end, and widespread bell ringing and door rituals. It ends with the famous bells verse about ringing out the old and ringing in the new.
In his youth the future Kaiser William II would roam incognito on New Year’s Eves to smash hats in the street. A crafty old man countered by wearing a nail studded leather cap, turning the emperor’s strike into a painful injury that required a surgeon. He abandoned the holiday mischief thereafter.
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