In ordinary life we meet with very few persons who are aware of the fact that the practice of regarding the first of January as the commencement of a new year is of very modern origin, in England, at least. Prior to 1752, in most legal or official matters, and in private records, the year commenced on the 25th of March. At this time an Act of Parliament was passed which "directed that the legal year which then commenced in some parts of this country in March, and in others in January, should universally be deemed to begin on the first of January." This will appear to many as a strange species of legislation, savouring somewhat of the vanity and irreverence for which Canute, the great Danish King of England, rebuked his courtiers, when he ironically commanded the tide to cease flowing, lest, forsooth, it should damp his royal shoe-leather. The commencement of the year, as has been before observed, being not a fact in physics, but a conventional or civil arrangement for human convenience, is therefore a legitimate subject for legislative interference, with the view to arrive at a uniformity of style, and so facilitate business operations and the enquiries of historians and students of science.
The practice of celebrating the new year's advent on the first of January appears to have obtained to a considerable extent in England long prior to its legal recognition. The famous Puritan writer, Prynne, in his "Histrio-Mastrix, or a Scourge for Stage Players," published in 1632, has the following slashing tirade against the festive observances of this period:—
"If we now parallel our grand disorderly Christmases with these Roman Saturnals and heathen festivals, or our New Yeare's Day (a chiefe part of Christmas), with their festivity of Janus, which was spent in mummeries, stageplays, dancing, and such like enterludes, wherein fidlers and others acted lascivious effeminate parts, and went about their towns and cities in women's apparel; whence the whole Catholicke Church (as Alchuvinus and others write), appointed a solemn publike faste upon this our New Yeare's day (which fast it seems is now forgotten), to bewail these heathenish enterludes, sports, and lewd idolatrous practices which have been used on it; prohibiting all Christians, under pain of excommunication, from observing the calends, or first of January (which we now call New Yeare's Day), as holy, and from sending abroad New Yeare's Gifts upon it (a custom now too frequent), it being a mere relique of paganisme and idolatry, derived from the heathen Romans' feast of two-faced Janus, and a practice so execrable unto Christians that not only the whole Catholicke Church, but even four famous Councils" [and an enormous quantity of other authorities which it is useless to quote] "have positively prohibited the solemnization of New Yeare's Day, and the sending abroad of New Yeare's Gifts, under an anathema and excommunication."
Although there can be no doubt that the practices referred to were in existence prior to the introduction of Christianity, yet the threat of excommunication and anathema failed to root them out of the heart of the mass of the population, and they survive to the present day. Some of the gifts made to sovereign princes on the advent of the new year were not only valuable, but often quaint in device, and sometimes, according to modern ideas, in singularly bad taste. The accomplished scholar, soldier, and courtier, Sir Philip Sidney, on the New Year's Day of 1578, presented to Queen Elizabeth a "cambric chemise, its sleeves and collar wrought with black work and edged with a small bone lace of gold and silver. With it was a pair of ruffs interlaced with gold and silver, and set with spangles which alone weighed four ounces." His friend Fulke Greville likewise presented an embroidered chemise. On another occasion of a similar character, (1581), "Sidney made three characteristic presents—a gold-handled whip, a golden chain, a heart of gold, as though in token of his entire subservience to her Majesty, and his complete surrender of himself to the royal keeping." On one occasion, the Earl of Ormond presented to the Queen "a golden phœnix, whose wings and feet glittered with rubies and diamonds, and which rested on a branch covered with other precious stones. Sir Christopher Hatton tendered a cross of diamonds, furnished with a suitable motto; also a gold fancy, imaging a dog leading a man over a bridge, and garnished with many gems." Lord and Lady Cobham each presented a satin petticoat elaborately ornamented. Her Majesty, on New Year's Day, it appears, did not disdain to receive presents from her servants and tradesmen. Nichols, in his "Royal Progresses," records that a laundress solicited the Queen's acceptance of three pocket handkerchiefs and a "tooth cloth." One domestic sought favour with a linen and another with a cambric nightcap. Apothecaries presented packets of green ginger, orange candy, and "that kind of stuff." A butler's offering consisted of a meat knife, "with a bone handle and a motto carved thereon," while the dustman tendered "two bolts of cambric," the head gardener a silver-gilt porringer, with a "snail sticking to an oak-leaf for handle," and the "sergeant of the pastry" a "great quince pie with gilt ornaments." The Queen, in return, presented her courtiers, etc., with "gilt plate, showing her esteem by the quantity of the article" apportioned to each recipient. In his preface Nichols remarks that "the only remains of this custom at court now is that the two chaplains in waiting, on New Year's Day, have each a crown piece laid under their plates at dinner."
Old Thomas Warmstry, as we have seen, held much milder language on this subject than Prynne. He regarded the gifts as "harmless provocations to Christian love, and mutual testimonies thereof to good purpose," notwithstanding their heathen origin. The practice is by no means extinct at the present time. In many towns shopkeepers present their customers, on New Year's Day, with candles, nutmegs, spices, etc., in token of good will.
Brand speaks of an ancient custom, which is yet retained in many places on New Year's Eve: "Young women went about with a Wassail Bowl of spiced ale, with some sort of verses that were sung by them as they went from door to door." This liquor was sometimes called "Lamb's Wool," although it is difficult to conjecture now for what reason. In the "olden time" it appears to have been compounded of ale, sugar, nutmeg, toast, and roasted apples or crabs. The wassail bowl originally meant a health-drinking vessel, and is of very ancient origin. The name is derived from two Anglo-Saxon words wæs hæl, which signify "be in health," "wax (grow) in health," or in modern phrase, "good health."
Geoffrey of Monmouth refers to the Saxon practice of health drinking on important occasions, when describing the visit of the British King Vortigern to the palace of Hengist, the chieftain of the Teutonic warriors then recently arrived in Britain. During the banquet, Rowena, the beautiful daughter of Hengist, "came out of her chamber bearing a golden cup of wine, with which she approached the King, and making a low courtsey, said to him, 'Lanerd' (lord) 'King, wacht heil!' The King, at the sight of the lady's face, was on a sudden both surprised and inflamed with her beauty, and, calling to his interpreter, asked him what she said, and what answer he should make her. 'She called you Lord King,' said the interpreter, 'and offered to drink your health. Your answer to her must be, 'Drinc heil!' Vortigern accordingly answered 'Drinc heil!' and bade her drink; after which he took the cup from her hand, kissed her, and drank himself. From that time to this it has been the custom in Britain, that he who drinks to anyone says 'Wacht heil!' and he that pledges him answers 'Drinc heil?'"
In process of time, the practice of drinking healths on solemn or festive occasions was confounded with ordinary tippling, and the term wassail became applied indiscriminately to all festive intemperance. Hamlet says, speaking of the drinking habits of the usurper, Claudius—
The King doth wake to-night, and takes his rouse,
Keeps wassel and the swaggering up-spring reels;
And, as he drains his draughts of Rhenish down,
The kettle-drum and trumpet thus bray out
The triumph of his pledge.
The Antiquarian Repertory (1775) contains a rude wood-cut of a bowl carved on an oaken beam, which had formed a portion of an ancient chimney recess. The vessel rests on the branches of an apple tree, alluding perhaps, Sir Henry Ellis suggests, to "part of the materials of which the liquor was composed." On one side the word Wass-heil is inscribed, and on the other Drinc-heile. A commentator on this relic informs us that it represents a Wassel Bowl, so beloved of yore by our hardy ancestors, "who, on the vigil of the New Year, never failed to assemble round the glowing hearth with their cheerful neighbours, and then, in the spicy Wassel Bowl (which testified the goodness of their hearts) drowned every former animosity—an example worthy of modern imitation. Wassel was the word, Wassel every guest returned, as he took the circling goblet from his friend, whilst song and civil mirth brought in the infant year."