January, 2008
Old Customs
** New Year's Gifts **
The practice of making presents on New Year's Day is now limited pretty generally to gifts from parents to children, or from the older members of a family to the younger. In olden times the practice was a universal one, and it is yet in full force in France.
The custom was undoubtedly derived from the Romans. Tacitus and Suetonius refer to it, while Claudius confined by edict the demanding of presents to that day. Fosbroke notices the continuation of the practice during the middle ages, while Matthew Paris charges Henry III. with having extorted gifts from his subjects on the New Year's Day.
The presentation of gloves was quite customary; and when a sum of money was given instead, it was called "glove-money."
In the beginning of sixteen century, when pins were first invented, and were made of silver, the presentation of them became quite popular with the gentlemen and quite acceptable to the ladies. When the money was given for the purchase of pins, it was called "pin-money."
The term has since then been applied to the money given by the husband to the wife for her private expenses. The presenting of gifts, on New Year's Day, to sovereigns, was carried to an extravagant height during the region of Queen Elizabeth. The jewelry, gold and silver coin, and ornaments for her person and palace, aggregated an immense sum yearly.
In Paris the time-honored custom is rigidly adhered to. The day is called Le Four d'Etrennes, and is attended with much external display and festivity.
The sales of sweetmeats on that day alone exceed one hundred thousand dollars. Some have been known to give away on that day one fifteenth part of their income. Everybody is expected to give according to his means - except the ladies, in whose case it is not insisted upon.
The New Year's presents of a young Parisian beauty amount to no mean sum. She commences early in the morning to display her gifts, in order to excite emulation in others, and obtain as much as possible.
We should be sorry to see the custom banished from the family circle. To us there seems something hallowed about it; it tends to strengthen the bonds of friendship, to cultivate the affections, to foster appreciativeness.
And no day could be more appropriate - the old year behind us, which no regrets can look forward with a determination to do better and to be better.