In some towns, Antwerp among others, it is supposed to be quite allowable for grown-up people, ladies and gentlemen, to kiss anyone they know on New Year's Day. A Belgian lady once told me that it brought good luck to kiss an officer of the army; but, of course, there are limits to this, as there are to kissing under the mistletoe in England.
In the country parts of South Belgium it is the custom to try to be the first to call out "Good New Year" when you meet a friend. If you say it first you have something given you. The children try to surprise their fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, and all the friends of the family in this way. They get up early, and hide themselves, so as to be able to jump out suddenly, and say "Een Zalig Nieuwjahr," which means "A Good New Year." All day long they go on doing it, and are never tired of telling each other about the tricks they have thought of to verassen, as it is called, the older people, who must give them gingerbread or sugar-plums as the penalty for being surprised in this way.
On New Year's Day in Belgium it is not only your friends who stop you in the street or call at your house. Every man, woman, boy, or girl who has done any work for you, and often those who have done nothing, expect to get something. They are very greedy. Railway-porters who have once brought a box to your house, ring your bell and beg. Telegraph-boys, scavengers paid by the town, bell-ringers, policemen, shop-boys, everyone comes bowing and scraping, and men who in England would be ashamed to take a "tip" will touch their hats, and hold out their hands for a few pence. They don't wait to be offered money; they ask for it, like common street-beggars asking alms.
January 6, the Feast of the Epiphany, is known in Flanders as Groot Nieuwjahr ("Great New Year"), and is kept to some extent by the working-people in the same way as the first day of the year. Mondays are always idle days with working-men in Belgium, and the first Monday after Epiphany is the idlest of them all. It is called Verloren Maandag, or, in French, Lundi Perdu, which means "Lost Monday," because no one does any work. The day is spent going about asking for money, and at night there is a great deal of drinking. On one of these Mondays not long ago some drunken troopers of a cavalry regiment stabbed the keeper of a village public-house near Bruges, broke his furniture to pieces, and kept the villagers in a state of terror for some hours.
One very bad thing about the lower-class Belgians is that when they drink, and begin to quarrel, they use knives, and wound or kill those who have offended them. By a curious superstition it is thought unlucky to work on Lost Monday, so the people get drunk, and more crimes of violence are committed on that day than at any other time of the year.
CHAPTER VIII
PAGEANTS AND PROCESSIONS
The Belgians are very fond of pageants and processions. In each town there are several, and in all villages at least one, every year. It has been so for hundreds of years, and these spectacles must have been magnificent in the Middle Ages, when the narrow streets were full of knights in glittering armour riding on their strong Flemish war-horses decked with embroidered saddle-cloths, bishops and priests in gorgeous vestments, standard-bearers, trumpeters, heralds in their robes of office, images of saints borne high above the crowd, mingled with jesters and the enormous giants with grotesque faces which were carried along on these occasions. The tall houses with their projecting wooden gables were gay with flags. The windows and balconies were hung with rich tapestry, and from them the wives and daughters of nobles and wealthy merchants looked down upon the scene below. A Queen of France once rode in a procession through the streets of Bruges, and was moved to jealousy by the sight of so many ladies decked in jewels as rich as her own. "I thought," she said, "that I alone was Queen, but here I have hundreds of rivals."