University of Virginia Library

OLD THOUGHTS ON THE NEW YEAR.

Tasso's “Aminta.”

Free Translation.

There are doubtless many new things to be said about the
New Year, if one had wit enough to think of them; but an' if
it be not so, may we not think over our last year's thoughts, or
those which pleased us ten years ago? It is certain that Providence
sends us this holiday season, with all its stirring influences,
once every year; and doubtless intends it should be enjoyed by
thousands who never had an original thought in their lives. So
we will write down our roving fancies as they rise, and leave
them to be woven into the fire-light reveries of just such comfortable
people.

“What does `holiday' mean, George?” said we once to a
shouting urchin of some seven years standing, as he was tossing
up his cap and huzzaing at the thought of a vacation. “What
does `holiday' mean?”

He stopped, looked serious, and then replied

“Why—I don't know—but—I always thought it was because
the boys holla so when they are let out of school.”

We predicted on the spot that George would write a dictionary

if he lived long enough. A decidedly etymological genius, and
quite original; for he owed but little to books, to our certain
knowledge.

We cannot hope to make as lucky a guess on the origin of the
New Year festival; but we will venture to say, nothing could be
more natural than the disposition to observe this way-mark on
life's swift-rolling course. In proof of this, the practice of noticing
anniversaries has prevailed from the earliest times. It is only
in these wondrously wise days, that the notion has arisen that it
is being too minute and vulgar to recognize occasions so revered
by our fathers:

in another sense than that of the poet. We are disposed to “cut”
holidays, as we do other antiquated worthies. Then again the
young and gay, in the levity of their hearts, think it tedious to
mingle with their joyance any touch of old-time remembrances.
We admit that the New Year, though a season for placid and
hopeful smiles, is scarcely one for laughter; yet we might (under
privilege of our gravity,) inquire whether an element of sobriety
may not sometimes be profitable, even in our pleasure. The bereaved
and sorrowful tell us that the habit of commemorating
particular days only makes more striking the chill blanks in the
social circle; pointing out the vacant chair; recalling the missing
voice, already but too keenly remembered. This is true;
but while sorrow is yet new and fresh, what is there that does
not bring up the beloved? And after the great Consoler has
done his blessed office, and grief is mellowed into sadness, do we
not attach a double value to whatever awakens most vividly the
cherished memory?

Gifts and keepsakes and little surprises used to be a pretty part
of the holiday season; and in Europe the New Year is still the
time of all others for cadeaux, and souvenirs, and gages d'amitié,
and gages d'amour. But the increase of luxury and the cultivation
of pride have almost spoiled all these pleasant things for us.
I fear we have leavened such matters with the commercial spirit.
Presents are made a sort of traffic, or a device of ostentation.
When emulation begins, sentiment is lost. The moment we admit

the idea that our generosity or our splendour will attract admiration;
the moment we think that our friend, if poor, will receive
our new-year gift as payment for some past kindness, or, if
rich, that he will be sure to give something still more elegant in
return, the present is degraded into an article of merchandise.
Indeed, costliness is no proper element of a mere present, since a
symbol is all we want.

In England the celebration of New Year is almost lost in that
of Christmas, which is a high and universal festival; whether
kept exactly in accordance with its true meaning and intent we
shall not here stop to inquire. Be this as it may, its approach
arouses “the fast-anchor'd isle” to its very heart. Even threadbare
court-gaiety receives an accession of something like sentient
life; and maids of honour new furbish their languid smiles, and
gentlemen-in-waiting pocket their scented 'kerchiefs, no longer
needed to veil inadmissible yawns. If high life brighten, how
much more the common folk, always so wisely ready to be
pleased! The housekeeper spends her evenings for six weeks
stoning “plums” in preparation for prelatic mince-pies and national
puddings. Huge sirloins of beef jostle at the corners of the
streets. The confectioner gives an additional touch of enchantment
to his sparkling paradise, which needed not this to make it
irresistible to the longing eyes that linger round it, unconsciously
endowing each individual temptation with the dazzling beauty
of the whole, and so really coveting all, though wishing only for
a modest portion. Christmas taxes all the invention of all the
artists in Pleasure's train for the production of novelties and excellences
in their several departments, and as there is not time
for a renewal of energy before New Year, they blend the two
occasions, and rejoice double tides. Even the poet, though not
always in the way when money is to be made, finds his services
now in request, and enjoys the farther delight of hearing his darling
verses chanted by the far-sounding throat of the street-singer:
true fame this, and not posthumous, like that of most poets.
Verses like those which follow, married to airs well deserving
such union, awaken the Queen's subjects earlier than they like
on Christmas morning:

So runs a “Christmas carol,” entitled “Divine Mirth,” bought
in the streets of London not many years ago. But we are like
our transatlantic neighbours—letting Christmas swallow up New
Year. To return from these “specimens of English poetry.”

We Knickerbockers date our New-Year festivities from our
honoured Dutch progenitors; and it should be considered treasor
even to propose the discontinuance of such time-honoured commemorations.
Among the innovations of the day, few try our
patience more severely than those pseudo-refinements upon pleasure,

which have been devised by the little great and the meanly
proud of our land, who in their agonizing efforts after a superiority
to which neither nature nor education has given them a claim,
hesitate not to sacrifice much for which they will never offer an
equivalent to society. An adherence to ancient usages belongs
to those who are accustomed to the enjoyments of wealth, and
covet the heightening power of association; who feel their position
to be secure, and therefore enjoy it with dignity, and make
no feverish efforts at display. These still keep up the social
round on the first day of the year, with its cordial greeting, its
hospitable welcome, and its whole-souled abandon, symbolical at
least of a forgetting of all causes of feud, and a renewing of ancient
good-will, however interrupted. There is a primitive relish
about these things to those who understand them; but to the
merely fashionable, who think only of the quantity of plate which
it is possible to exhibit on the occasion, the splendour and costliness
of the refreshments, and above all, the number of stylish
names which may be enrolled among the hundreds of unmeaning
visiters, it is caviare indeed. Their spirit is a profane one; it
fancies that money will buy every thing.

We would not insist upon the full adherence to primitive customs;
since that would include rather more stimulus than accords
with our notions of propriety; and we have heard too that the
Knickerbocker practice of presenting each guest with a shieldlike
“cookie,” though an excellent one for the bakers, was wont to
prove rather inconvenient to some thorough-going visiters, who
were in danger of meeting with the fate of the damsel of old,
who was crushed under the weight of gifts somewhat similar.
Tradition informs us that the Dutch Dominies, who were especial
favourites, used to be obliged to leave whole pyramids of splendid
cookies—suns, moons, General Washington, Santa-Claus, and all
—at the houses of tried friends, to be sent for next morning. We
would not ask so minute an observance of the customs of Nieuw-Amsterdam,
but we plead for the main point, the festival, with
the hearty, social feeling that gives value to it. This may be
unfashionable in some quarters, but it is human, and gives occasion
for one of the too few recognitions of a common nature and
a common interest. But, strange power of fancy! here we are

carried back to all the bustle and excitement of a New-Year's
day in the city. What a contrast to the realities around us!
This bright, soft-singing wood fire, crackling occasionally with
that mysterious sound which the good vrouws call “treading
snow,” and which they hold to foretell sleighing; the cat coiled
up cozily on the hearth-rug, fast asleep; even the sounds which
but just reach the ear when the ground is dry and bare, now
hushed by the thick covering of snow out of doors; now and
then a low, black sled moving silently along the road; and still
more seldom a solitary foot-passenger, with his rifle or his axe
on his shoulder; how can we imagine to ourselves the thronging
crowds that make the very stones resound under the thousand vehicles
and quick trampling feet in the great thoroughfares? Not
Imagination but Memory lends her aid in this instance; Memory,
never more faithful than when she recalls to the emigrant the
home-scenes of former days. Yet we ought hardly to call her
faithful, for she always reverses rules in her pictures, placing her
brightest tints in the back-ground. Brilliant lights, with only
shadow enough to bring them out, characterize her distant views,
and this is no true perspective, though we are prone to put faith
in it. We must not use such views for studies.

Far removed from all the pleasurable associations of this period,
we too hail the New Year, but not with the old feeling. We wish
each other a “happy new year” as usual, but there is a touch
of sadness in our greeting. Our new homes have not yet the
warmth of the old; there is a chill hanging about them still,
especially at these seasons when we recall the warm grasp of
early friends. The young only are thoroughly gay here. They
dwell not on the past; they trouble not their heads about the
future. They have an ever-welling fount of happiness within;
while we, their elders, are compelled to dig deep, and sometimes
even then strike no vein. To them, sport in the wilds is as good
as sport any where else. They skate, they slide, they run races;
they take the hill-side with their rough, home-made sleds, and
they ask nothing better. This for the younger scions. Those a
step more advanced, get up shooting-matches, or dancing-matches;
pleasure on a more dignified scale. We will not describe that
vile form of the shooting-match, wherein a poor turkey is tied to

a post, to be mangled in cold blood by the boobies of the neighbourhood;
those who never fired a shot in their lives taking the lead; as
when a number of lawyers are to speak on the same side, those
who are not expected to hit at all are placed first. This is a cruel,
unmanly, un-western sport, and should be scorned by the forester.
He has been driven to it by the unnatural lack of all decent and
proper amusement. The true shooting-match, when conducted
on the large scale, affords famous sport. Two parties, matched
and balanced as nearly as may be in skill and numbers, and each
commanded by a leader chosen on account of his general qualifications,
social as well as sporting, set out at break of day, in
different directions; it makes but little difference which way,
since game is plenty at all points. A time and place of rendezvous
are appointed, and certain kinds of game prescribed as
within the rules; and each party, collectively or severally, as
circumstances may require, makes as wide a search as time will
allow, and brings down as many deer, partridges, quails, etc., as
possible; horses being in attendance to bear home the fortune of
the day. At the place appointed the whole is examined, counted
and judged, according to the rules and rates agreed on, and
umpires then award the palm of victory. “To the victors belong
the spoils” of course; so the vanquished furnish the evening's
entertainment, except that the game is common property. This
makes no contemptible New Year's day for the young men; and
choice game is not despised as the substantial part of the supper
which succeeds or rather divides what we mentioned awhile ago
—a dancing-match.

This, we should think, must be more laborious even than the
shooting-match; at least it is more like steady, serious, unremitting
work. Two in the afternoon is not too soon to begin, nor six
in the morning too late to finish. Now if this be not a trial of
strength, what is? It proves so; for only the most resolute hold
out through the whole time. Even they would doubtless flag
were it not for the supper at which we have hinted above, of
which (to their honour be it spoken) our rustic damsels are not
too affected to be willing to partake with good will and without
mincing. They dance “the old year out and the new year in,”
sometimes; but usually the ball closes the sports of New-Year's

day, and you may see them as the sun is rising on the second
day of the year, sleigh-load after sleigh-load, going home as
merry as larks, under the care of their stout beaux, not half so
tired as a city belle is after walking through a cotillon.

Sometimes the snow is so fine that a grand sleigh-ride takes the
place of the grand hunt on this day. As many as possible are
engaged, and they go off some fifteen or twenty or thirty miles,
with as many strings of bells as can be raised for the occasion,
and have an impromptu supper and dance, and return home by
moonlight. One indispensable condition of such a party is an exact
pairing—an Adam and Eve division of the company; so that
if a single nymph or swain be missing before the day arrives, and
no one is found to supply the vacancy, the counterpart shares the
misfortune, and remains at home. We have known companies
where an approach to this rule—a belle to every beau—would
have been convenient, and saved some sour looks. Here it is all
in good faith, and the appropriation very strict, for the time being;
and particular attention or graciousness to more than one of the
party is contrary to etiquette. The pairs speak of each other as
“my mate,” with all the gravity imaginable.

After all, these are the people who taste the true sweets of
pleasure, strictly so called. They enjoy themselves freely and
heartily, caring nothing for what those very dignified and rather
dull people who call themselves “the world” may think of their
dress or their dancing. It would not give them a moment's concern
to be told that people a hundred miles off thought them half
savages. And nothing would be so odious to them as the ceremony,
the constraint, the clatter, and the stupidity of many an
unmeaning fashionable party. They would hardly believe you
if you should tell them that people really do get together at great
cost and trouble to look at each other's dresses and a decorated
supper-table, and go home again. “What! no music! no dancing!
no nothing! Awful! I'd ruther spin wool all day!”

To those of us who have done with all these things; whose
“dancing days are over,” and who are studying the difficult art
of “growing old gracefully,” the coming of another year brings
reflection, if not sadness. “What shadows we are, and what
shadows we pursue!” Who can stand upon the verge of another

era, without emotion? Who does not feel, as this change passes
before him, something of the awe that thrilled the veins of him who
saw “an image” but “could not discern the form thereof?”
How little can we guess of this turning leaf in our destiny! If
the heart be light, we read on the dim scroll words of soft and
sweet promise, traced by the ready fingers of Hope. If there be
a cloud on the spirit, we can discern only characters gloomy as
any that remain of memory's writing; while perhaps that Eye
from which nothing is hidden, sees Death sweeping with his dark
wing all that fond imagination had presented to our view, leaving
our part in this life's future, one chill blank. Blessed be God that
our eyes are “holden!” To Him who has controlled the past in
love and mercy, we may safely commit the future.