New Year's Rites in the Highlands
NEW YEAR'S DAY was not in pre-Reformation times associated with any special rites. Hence Scottish Reformers, while subjecting to discipline those who observed Christmas, were willing that New Year's Day should be appropriated to social pleasures. Towards the closing hour of the 31st December each family prepared a hot pint of wassail bowl of which all the members might drink to each other's prosperity as the new year began. Hot pint usually consisted of a mixture of spiced and sweetened ale with an infusion of whiskey. Along with the drinking of the hot pint was associated the practice of first foot, or a neighborly greeting. After the year had commenced, each one hastened to his neighbor's house bearing a small gift; it was deemed "unlucky" to enter "empty handed."
With New Year's Day were in some portions of the Highlands associated peculiar rites. At Strathdown the junior anointed in bed the elder members of the household with water, which the evening before had been silently drawn from "the dead and living food." Thereafter they kindled in each room, after closing the chimneys, bunches of juniper. These rites, the latter attended with much discomfort, were held to ward off pestilence and sorcery.
The direction of the wind on New Year's Eve was supposed to rule the weather during the approaching year. Hence the rhyme:
If New Year's Eve night-wind blow south,
It betokeneth warmth and growth;
If west, much milk,—and fish in the sea:
If north, much cold and storms there will be;
If east, the trees will bear much fruit;