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Welcoming the New Year

Welcoming the New Year 2007
 
The whole range of celebration of the New Year's Day basically stems from the various ways ancient societies used to greet the new harvest season.  In fact, it is the number of harvests, whether of fruit or grain, that determined how many New Years were observed.  The origins of the customs that we think of are peculiarly associated with celebration of the New Year, took roots in the ways the ancient peoples regarded the New Year.  Likewise the other ancient societies in other parts of the world, the New Years festivities had been observed in our wild forests and plains by the native Indians.  To the Creek Indians the ripening of the corn in July or August signified the termination of one year and the beginning of another.  It was their customs to drape themselves with new clothes, replace the old interiors and households.  The Iroquois, another native Indian tribe who inaugurated the New Year in January, February or March with ceremonies emphasizing the expulsion of the evil spirits.  The customs of sporting disguise and masks, making noises and confessions were all practiced by them.
 
Symbolically, New Year signifies a renewal of life.  Hence, the spirit of celebration for the regeneration, while discarding the old and worn out.  The customs and practices, though modified through the centuries, have still their distinctive strains in the way we welcome each onrushing year.  It was the Dutch, in their New Amsterdam settlement at mid - 17th century, who originated the modern American New Year celebration.  The New Year's Day was the most important holiday for the Dutch who were noted in all the colonies for their love of beer and wine.
 
The Mid-night cacophony - The idea of making deafening noise is to drive away the evil spirits who flocked to the living at this climactic season with a great wailing of horns and shouts and beating of drums.  This is why at the stroke of midnight we hear the deafening cacophony of sirens, car horns, boat whistles, party horns, church bells, drums, pots and pans - anything that serves the purpose of producing a devil chasing din.
 
New Year's Resolution - In order to have a 'clean slate' on which to start the New Year, people in times past have made certain that they had all their borrowings cleared.  Those were the days before such complexities as credit buying.  The New Years resolutions, which we are so fond of, represent other efforts to make the year brand new.  In fact, we often say that in the New Year we are "turning over a new leaf".
 
New Year's Eve - The practice of visiting friends continued until the first years of this century.  It was a gala time when everyone held open house and laid out enormous feasts for anyone who should drop in, whether friend or stranger.  Unfortunately in time the custom was abused; the distinction between privacy and sociability was ignored and troops of unwanted guests descended on the open houses, using them as eating and drinking stations.  Thus the whole range of ideas of purgation, purifications, the confessions of sins, driving of demons, expulsion of evil and so on tranpired.  The idea remained the same; the abolition of the past.