Wishing to Christianize a pagan custom as they always tried to do, these earlier divines invented Christmas gifts as a substitute. Wherefore we unfortunate dwellers in the West have the survival of both Christmas and New Year's gifts; in Greece Christmas gifts are unknown; but there exists not in Greece a man, however poor, who does not make an effort to give his friends a gift on the day of the Kalends.
J. Theodore Bent
"Smashing" in the New Year
THE Old Year went out with much such a racket as we make nowadays, but of quite a different kind. We did not blow the New Year in, we "smashed" it in. When it was dark on New Year's Eve, we stole out with all the cracked and damaged crockery of the year that had been hoarded for the purpose and, hieing ourselves to some favorite neighbor's door, broke our pots against it. Then we ran, but not very far or very fast, for it was part of the game that if one was caught at it, he was to be taken in and treated to hot doughnuts. The smashing was a mark of favor, and the citizen who had most pots broken against his door was the most popular man in town. When I was in the Latin School a cranky burgomaster, whose door had been freshly painted, gave orders to the watchmen to stop it, and gave them an unhappy night, for they were hard put to it to find a way it was safe to look, with the streets full of the best citizens in town, and their wives and daughters, sneaking singly by with bulging coats on their way to salute a friend. That was when our mothers, those who were not out smashing in the New Year, came out strong after the fashion of mothers. They baked more doughnuts than ever that night, and beckoned the watchman in to the treat; and there he sat, blissfully deaf while the street rang with the thunderous salvos of our raids; until it was discovered that the burgomaster himself was on post, when there was a sudden rush from kitchen doors and a great scurrying through the streets that grew strangely silent.
The town had its revenge, however. The burgomaster, returning home in the midnight hour, stumbled in his gate over a discarded Christmas-tree hung full of old boots and many black and sooty pots that went down round him with a great smash as he upset it, so that his family came running out in alarm to find him sprawling in the midst of the biggest celebration of all. His dignity suffered a shock which he never quite got over. But it killed the New Year's fun, too. For he was really a good fellow, and then he was the burgomaster and chief of police to boot. I suspect the fact was that the pot-smashing had run its course. Perhaps the supply of pots was giving out; we began to use tinware more about that time. That was the end of it, anyhow.
Jacob Riis in The Old Town
New Year Calls in Old New York
FROM old Dutch times to the middle of the nineteenth century New Year's Day in New York was devoted to an universal interchange of visits. Old friendships were renewed, family differences settled, a hearty welcome extended even to strangers of presentable appearance.