Happy New Year! New Year's Kissing Customs

1920

New Year Kissing Customs

Saluting the Parish Pump

There has always been a close and mystic association of kissing with the New Year. Every lover, if circumstances permit, thus salutes his sweetheart at the dawn of the New Year—and some lovers are not particular whose sweetheart she is that they thus salute on this auspicious occasion.

There is an ancient kissing custom associated with a parish church in Lancashire. The legend is that anyone who at the first stroke of midnight kisses the keyhole of the church door, and then runs right round the edifice on time to kiss the keyhole before the last stroke of the hour is certain of good luck during the whole of the year.

It requires a certain amount of nerve to enter this country churchyard at the dead of night, even for such a purpose, but rumor hath it that no new year is born without someone essaying the race round the church. The distance is such that it is impossible for more than one person to thus court a year's luck.

Churchyards have always been favorite places for New Year osculations. In the Wensleydale district, in days gone by, all and sundry could kiss "without scandal" on New Year's eve in the porch of the church.

It was largely availed of, too, for it is on record that the accommodation fell lamentably short of the demand, and consequently there was even more squeezing than kissing—if that were possible.

A somewhat gruesome kind of churchyard kissing used to obtain among the Basques of the Pyrenees on New Year's eve. It was the custom for the maidens to then repair to the churchyard and on their fingers waft kisses to the four quarters of the universe.

A kiss was supposed to brush their lips on return, and if it was warm it indicated that they would marry and be happy ever after. On the other hand if the kiss was cold and of the earth earthy, the inference was that single "blessedness" would be their lot.

The only means by which the omen could be broken was by repairing to the church and kissing the church bell, a gravestone and a piece of coffin wood. This remedy was very frequently resorted to; and so superstitious were the Basque maidens that but for the consolation afforded some of them would have lost their reason.

In these degenerate days the lot of the mayor of Durham is far happier than that of his predecessors in ancient times. If tradition can be relied on the chief magistrate was then under an obligation to kiss the first cow, the first sheep and the first pig brought into the first market of the New Year.

This went on until it occurred to a resourceful occupant of the mayoral chair to interpret the custom as relating to the first three market women, and henceforward they were the recipients of the New Year kisses until the ancient custom vanished altogether.

It is much to be feared that the abuse of kissing customs has been largely responsible for their falling into disuse, though some of them are certainly more honored in the breach than in the observance.

One such, which used to obtain in Oxfordshire, concerned the tenants of certain estates which they held on condition that on New Year's morning they publicly kissed the parish pump or paid a drink fine to the assembled populace.

As might be supposed the tenants almost invariably preferred to pay the fine, but it is on record that one misguided, close-fisted individual actually kissed the pump in order to keep the fine in his pocket.

The populace were so disgusted at his meanness and infuriated at the loss of the liquor that they held him under the pump and pumped the water on him until he was almost washed away.

The exchange of drink for kisses was, in the bad old days, a not infrequent New Year's day practice in public houses, where it sometimes led to rows and riots among the frequenters.

At one hostelry in the metropolis it was the custom for the landlord to hand out to every member of the opposite sex who called before the hour of noon on New Year's day a measure of ale in exchange for a kiss. What the landlord's better half thought of this proceeding report sayeth not.

At another London public house it used to be permissible for the first customer on New Year's morning to kiss the barmaid by way of paying for his liquor. But only the first was entitled to this privilege, and any subsequent caller who presumed to pay in this fashion had to forfeit half a crown to the barmaid. One astute Hebe got her sweetheart to call first and mulcted several later callers of the customary half crown in the course of the morning.

-The Humeston New Era, Humeston, Iowa, December 29, 1920, page 4.