Her’s another little snippet from the notes I found, written in 1980 about seasonal traditions in Somerset and the west country:
It was fortunate that, soon after Childermass, there were plenty of opportunities for the year to end happily. The complex customs associated with “letting in” the New Year, practiced in Northern England and Scotland, are not native to Somerset, but both have in common a preference for a man to be the first to set foot in a house after midnight. There was also the strange custom of making a boy enter a house backwards. The origin of this is unknown, but could be related to the belief that ill-luck is easily deflected by moving in the opposite direction to the way one was going.
On New Year’s Eve some people took down their Christmas decorations, as they considered it unlucky to leave them up into the New Year, but most people left them until January 6th (Twelfth Night). Some people were unwilling to wait for January 1st, the Bible would be opened at random and a passage read aloud to discover the family’s fortunes for the coming year,
The wish was implicit that the Old Year should end on an optimistic note and this should carry over into New year’s Day,, so setting a good pattern for the year lying ahead.
Childermass, which I have heard of but wasn’t really sure I knew what it celebrated, but apparently it is a very early Christian festival remembering the slaughter of the innocents by King Herod in the nativity story. The dates seem to vary from December 27th to January 1st but I’m not sure how it was ‘celebrated’ in Somerset… more research needed!
Lois Elsden 