There is an old custom in the north of England, according to Brockett’s ‘North Country Glossary,’ that the first person who enters the house on New Year’s Day is called First-Foot, who is considered to influence the fate of the family, especially the female part, for the whole of the year. Need we doubt that the fair damsels of the household take good care that some favoured swain shall be this influential First-Foot, hoping perhaps that ere the next season he may have a dwelling of his own to receive such characters, instead of enacting it himself; of course he comes provided with an acceptable New Year’s Gift.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE masks and pageants at court appear to have been gradually abandoned from the time of the Restoration, as before mentioned. They were succeeded by grand feasts and entertainments, which also fell gradually into disuse, and latterly even that relic, the Christmas tureen of plum-porridge, served up at the royal chaplains’ table, was omitted, and the crown-pieces under their plates for New Year’s Gifts soon followed. The poet-laureat has long since been relieved from that tax on his imagination, the New Year’s Ode; and the only remaining ceremony is, I believe, the offering on Twelfth Day. George the First and Second were in the habit of playing at hazard in public at the groom-porter’s, where several of the nobility, and even some of the princesses, staked considerable sums; but in the time of George the Third the practice was abolished, and a handsome gratuity given to the groom-porter by way of compensation.
It will be understood that the remarks as to the abatement in Christmas festivities, apply more particularly to what may be considered as state or public observances; for Christmas feasting and revelry were still kept up throughout the last century in many parts, according as the spirit of hospitality prevailed, accompanied, but too frequently, by that excess for which those times have gained an unenviable celebrity, and where the motto appears to have been—
“Fill up the bowl, then, fill it high,
Fill all the glasses then, for why
Should every creature drink but I?
Why, man of morals, tell me why?”