New Year's Day

January 1

The custom of celebrating the first day of the year is a very ancient one. The exchange of gifts, the paying of calls, the making of good resolutions for the new year and feasting often characterize the day. The custom of ringing the church bells is of the widest extent.

The old-world custom of sitting up on New Year's eve to see the old year out is still very common.

EXTRACT FROM "SOCIAL LIFE IN THE COLONIES"

The Century Magazine, July 1885

BY EDWARD EGGLESTON

New Year's Day was celebrated among the New York Dutch by the calls of the gentlemen on their lady friends; it is perhaps the only distinctly Dutch custom that afterward came into widespread use in the United States. New Year's Day, and the church festivals kept alike by the Dutch and English, brought an intermission of labor to the New York slaves, who gathered in throngs to devote themselves to wild frolics. The Brooklyn fields were crowded with them on New Year's Day, at Easter, at Whitsuntide, or "Prixter," as the Dutch called it, and on "San Claus Day"—the feast of St. Nicholas.

• A Chinese New Years in California