New Year's Day

Tonight at midnight, a new year begins.  In our culture, and in most cultures, the first day of a new year, whatever the day on the calendar has almost mythic  meanings for us humans.  I grew up with the discussion between the generations, back and forth, about what we could and could not do on the actual first day of the new year.  My mother was somewhat of a rebel and would argue long and hard with those who told her what she could and could not do. She felt that faith trumped old beliefs and that was that!  Not so, my granny although she would not argue with you about anything.  She was just too sweet and she wouldn't want to hurt any one's feelings, not even her stubborn youngest daughter.

So, I grew up in a household that, for all purposes, didn't "believe" any of that nonsense.  Now, we still had greens, rice, and black eyed peas on New year's Day, but it was because, supposedly, my father liked them.

My father was drafted into the army during World War II.  He was sent to the Philippine Islands about a year before the end of the war.  My mother did not have electricity or running water at the little house where we lived.  She had a day to do her wash and that was the day she did it.  In 1945 New year's Day came on her wash day. She filled the wash pot with water, lit the fire under it, and was well on her way to having the clothes on the line by mid morning.  One of the neighbors, Mr. Wimberly passed the house,  was horrified when he saw what she was doing and went straight to Land's Store where my mother's older sister Onie lived, reporting the happening and urging her to "get down there and stop her before John got shipped home in a box."

As I grew up in our sleepy Southern community, I continued to hear about bad luck and omen's and I delighted in hearing my daddy tell his old stories that he picked up from the workers at Maxwell Brother's Mill.  I never really thought about them all until I was a graduate student at Florida (yes.  I confess.  I went to graduate school at the University of Florida) and had the opportunity to take a folklore class.  One of my projects was collecting beliefs, cures, and tales.  What fun I had sitting at my mother's kitchen table and listening to her and our neighbor Florie Webb Miller talk about the things their mothers had taught them.  My granny was still with me and she shared a song she knew that her mother had taught her.  I found that a lot of daddy's old tales went a long way back.

So, when I think of New Year's, I think of all the tradition and all the beliefs handed down for hundreds of years.  I grieve a little to think that all of this is rapidly disappearing from our lives.  I miss hearing the tales my daddy told.  I miss hearing my Granny softly say, "Now it isn't that I really believe this, but it don't hurt to be careful."  I miss when people had time to tell a tale and others had time to listen.

Do I believe that if I wash on New Year's Day someone will die in my family?  No, but "it don't hurt to be careful."