In some parts of China there prevails a curious custom among mendicants of electing a chief who goes to each shopkeeper and asks a donation. If that received be liberal, a piece of red paper affixed to the merchant's doorway exempts him from applications from the begging fraternity for one year. During this term of immunity there will be no annoyance from the clatter on his doorpost of the beggars' bamboo.
For the time being, business is suspended, tribunals are closed, houses are decorated, gifts interchanged, large sums expended on fireworks, and the celebration reaches full swing on the night of the Feast of Lanterns, when every dwelling in the Kingdom from the mud-walled bamboo hut, to the Emperor's palace with marble halls, are all illuminated with lanterns of every size and shape. At the end of the feast a great pyrotechnic display takes place, in the courtyard of the better class of residences, in the streets before the abodes of the middle and lower classes, each one trying to outdo the year before in the magnificence of the display, the strangeness of the devices, and the brilliancy of the fireworks. The air is illumined with millions of sparks, and the eye rests upon thousands of grotesque monsters outlined in the many colored flames.
H. C. Sirr in China and the Chinese
New Year's Gifts in Thessaly
NO good Thessalian would think of being absent from the liturgy on New Year's morning, and no good peasant would think of leaving behind him the pomegranate which has been exposed to the stars all night, and which they take to the church for the priest to bless. On his return home the master of each house dashes this pomegranate on the floor as he crosses his threshold, and says as he does so, "May as many good-lucks come to my household as there are pips in this pomegranate;" and apostrophizing, so to speak, the demons of the house, he adds, "Away with you, fleas, and bugs, and evil words; and within this house may health, happiness, and the good things of this world reign supreme!"
In like manner, no good housewife would neglect to distribute sweets to her children on New Year's morning, considering that by eating them they will secure for themselves a sweet career for the rest of the year.
And many other little superstitions of a kindred nature are considered essential to the well-being of the family. In one house we entered on New Year's Day we were presented with pieces of a curious and exceedingly nasty leavened loaf, and were told that this is the New Year's cake which every family makes; into it is dropped a coin, and he who gets the coin in his slice will be the luckiest during the coming year. Every member of the family has a slice given to him—even the tiny baby, who has not the remotest chance of consuming all his; and then besides the family slices, two large ones are always cut off the cake and set on one side; one of these is said to be "for the house," which nobody eats, but when it is quite dry it is put on a shelf near the sacred pictures, which occupy a corner in every home, however humble, and is dedicated to the saints—the household gods of the old days. The other slice is for the poor, who go around with baskets on their arms on New Year's Day and collect from each household the portion which they know has been put aside for them.
Every Thessalian, however poor, gives a New Year's gift "for good luck," they say; and these gifts curiously enough are called ἐπινομίδες—a word which we find Athenænus using as a translation of the Roman term strena for the same gift, which still exists in the French étrennes and Italian strenne. Even as in ancient Rome gifts were given on this day bona ominis causa so did we find ourselves constantly presented with something on New Year's Day—nuts, apples, dried figs, and things of a like nature, which caused our pockets to become inconveniently crowded. I fancy it was much the same in Roman days and probably earlier as it is now in out of the way corners of Greece. We know how on New Year's Day clients sent presents to their patrons—slaves to the lords, friends to friends, and the people to the Emperor—and that Caligula, who was never a rich man, took advantage of this custom and made known that on New Year's Day he wanted a dower for his daughter, which resulted in such piles of gold being brought that he walked barefoot upon them at his palace door.
The custom of giving New Year's gifts in Rome grew as great a nuisance as wedding presents bid fair to become with us, and sumptuary laws had to be passed to restrict the lavish expenditure in them, and the earlier Christian divines took occasion to abuse them hotly, St. Augustine calling New Year's gifts "diabolical" and Chrysostom preaching that the first of the year was a "Satanic extravagance."