Written By Alice Gibb
While today we feast on Christmas Day, our ancestors often socialized on New Year’s Day instead. Pioneers happily adopted the New Year’s traditions of French and Scottish settlers. On January 1, gentlemen were expected to call on their friends, including clergymen, but to pay special attention to the ladies in homes they visited. Dressed in their best finery, the ladies often stayed in all New Year’s Day to await their callers.
The men often arrived in pairs or even small groups, traveling either in sleighs, carriages or on foot. Families could expect their visitors to arrive from about ten o’clock in the morning until 9 p.m. at night.
Refreshments offered to the callers might include oysters, raw and scalloped, cold meats, fruits, rich cakes and wine. Refined gentlemen would leave behind their calling cards in a basket at the door.
Rev. William Proudfoot, an early Presbyterian minister in the London area, wrote in his diary on January 1, 1833: “This morning came in with heavy rain, which dampened the exhilaration of spirits with which we used to meet the New Year. The gloominess of the morning was favorable to that thoughtfulness with which the lapse of time ought to be contemplated.” Anna Jameson and Susanna Moodie, who both wrote about pioneer customs in Upper Canada, also described the custom of New Year’s
Day calls. If a gentleman wished to drop an acquaintance, he simply did not call on the ladies of that family. The next time the two men met in public, they would cut each other dead.
Although New Year’s Eve parties were held, they mainly involved dancing rather than drinking. The Wesleyan Methodists, for example, had the custom of “praying the old year out, and praying the new year in.”
From the 1840s to 1860s, with British soldiers garrisoned in downtown London, New Year’s Day house parties were popular – with the young officers attending in formal attire. Since farmers still had chores to do, even on New Year’s Day, festivities for rural families often included sleigh or cutter rides to the homes of friends; or tobogganing, snowshoe or skating parties.
The London (Ontario) Times reported a typical New Year’s celebration at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Walter Nixon in 1846. To quote: “The party assembled were both large and numerous, who, after doing justice in real John Bull style to the good things of life in the shape of roast beef and plum pudding, and partaking of a few glasses of Watty’s celebrated whiskey and Shepherd’s splendid ale…drank health and prosperity to its owner and family in long enjoyment…”
Certainly a young lady could judge her popularity in the community by simply keeping tabs on the number of gentlemen who stopped by on New Year’s Day. And one of those gentlemen, by year’s end, might well become a permanent fixture in her life!
