The Universalist. [volume] (Chicago [Ill.]) 1884-1897, 1897-01-02
THE DAWNING OF A NEW YEAR.

The dawn of New Year is an event
in human life whose importance is
signified in various ways in different
countries of the world. Formerly
when the gates of Janus opened at
the vernal equinox the customs par
took more of less of an agricultural
character and simplicity, as among
the ancient Persians, and with the
Chinese to the present day. After
wards various festivities, including o
kind Of masked rout, in which every
one went about in a mask, and in
Paris a feast called the festival of
fools, was celebrated on January l..
Even to the present time New Years
day is the chief day of the year for
rejoicings in France, where in OPP
position to the customs that prevail
in England and America, the first day
of the year instead of Christmas is
the popular gift day, when every one
gives some kind of gift to his neigh
bors and friends. The French GUS
tom of making New Years eve spec
cial festival is very pleasant one.
The early part of the evening having
been devoted to dancing, cards, or
some form of social amusement, a
supper follows about eleven or half
past. The meal proceeds with all
the vivacity attendant upon mid
night supper on festival occasion.
At the time of the passing of the
old and the entrance of the new the
rising tide of merriment explodes
in joyous greetings and maximum
of rejoicings and expressions of
goodwill, giving very pleasant send
eff to the New Year.
In this country customs do not diff
fer widely and are confined chiefly to
giving of small presents, especially
to dependents and servants, the max
ing of friendly calls and, above all,
in Chicago at the moment of mid
night, and for perhaps half an hour
after, by pandemonium of noise in
which the shrieks of engines, blow
ing of horns, ringing of bells and
almost every kind of noise may be
distinguished.
This custom, especially in news
paper establishments and other
places where night work is regular
thing, is picturesque in some of its
details and certainly vociferous and
noisy to the last degree. The parties
from theaters and concerts usually
celebrate theopening of the year after
the same noisy manner, too often,
however, with bad results the next
morning, when the noisy reveller
finds it necessary to seek the aid of
the nearest druggist to restore equi-
librium to his thoughts and to his walk
before appearing at his own home.
The customary resolutions of
New Years are, with some, a source
of merriment, but were the prom
ises and resolves then made gener-
ally kept, the New Year festival
might be regarded as great agency
of reform. Unfortunately, like the
custom of beginning diaries, these
good resolutions rarely live long
into the new year and at the next an
niversary the victim of habit or
vice which in his better moments he
wishes to be rid of, is usually ready
again for the annual failure at re-
form.
This phase, though open to ludi-
crous aspects, is also one of the most
important of all, in reality, in con-
nection with the dawn of a New
Year. To almost any reasonable
thinking being the closing of one
year and the entrance upon another
is suggestive, and still more SO, if con-
scious that the year just closing and
about to vanish into the unclaimable
past has been one of failure in living
up to his highest ideals, as is too fire.
quently the case.
Richter, in one of his wonderful pen
pictures, has given us a vivid por-
trayal of the "New Years night of an
unhappy man." in which, as in
vision, the man finds himself at the
close of a mis-spent life with oppor-
tunities wasted, hopes dead, and the
future a blank or worse. Then comes