Wassail! A very happy New Year to you. I know we’re a full week into this brave new dawn we’re calling 2023, but for some, certainly for me, at least, the real business of the new year starts now, or tomorrow, but certainly not last week. I struggle to hit the ground running you see.
There is nothing new about January 1st that wasn’t true on December 31st - that is the logician’s view. And yet every fibre inside me wishes there was. I crave a new start in January; a rebirth, an ability to think and behave differently, more efficiently, or perhaps just better than I did on December 31st.
I tend to buy a diary (this year from Pith Supply in Berwick Upon Tweed and I think it might be the diary that finally changes me), or a pile of notebooks, or both, and I tend to ruminate and dream about ways I might wring more from myself and my meagre talents this year.
This instinct dulls and dies quite quickly, I’ve learned that over the years. And yet I come back to it each year anew, a homing pigeon set sure for home, despite my own consistent shortcomings.
I’ve been watching Marie Antoinette this week (not a confession linked to the New Year, just a statement of fact,) a new take on her life from the writer of The Favourite, and whilst it hasn’t held my attention wholesale, it has moments that have made me think; namely, one scene in episode three when a cousin to the King is charged with organising a big celebration, an event that is seemingly always themed. His theme of choice? ‘Merry England’. The ensuing festivity seems an absolute riot, and it got me thinking, we have a rich tradition of ceremony and celebration. We also have a rich tradition of snobbishness, snootiness and a desire to cut down anything too bucolic, romantic, or traditional. We build things up, we scythe things down. It’s why many of our traditions, celebrities, or notable characteristics live fonder on shores and in minds abroad than they do here.
It has become a signifier of quite some significance (seemingly) to loudly and quite certainly denigrate the concept of New Year’s resolutions to anyone who cares to listen. Some, in doing so, insinuate a connection between resolutions and corporate exploitation, some between resolutions and anti-wellness, perhaps suggesting a link to mental health struggles, and some suggest a small-minded suburban Britishness linked to the need to set a series of trite resolutions that soon become pitfalls for oneself to stumble and fall over in the first few weeks and months of the year. Resoundingly, resolutions are seen as a pithy modern waste of time, and whatever one's position, in my echo chamber it seems there is an emphatic conclusion that New Year’s resolutions are wrong, not enlightened, damaging and generally bad for you and society in general. So that’s that.
Yet, new years resolutions are Babylonian. As in they’ve been part of restarting the year since about 2000 BC, and as such, they long outdated capitalism, wellness and suburban Britishness by a good few thousand years. From Babylon, the ritual was picked up by the ancient Romans, who switched up the calendar and instated the New year as we know it on January 1st, and from there, it seems our paths were set.
I’m not quite sure why I’m blathering on about resolutions, to be honest. I’m not a ritual setter of them and save the resolution to release a newsletter of my own writing each week for a year and see what happens, I’ve never stuck to one.
I think what I was hoping when I landed upon this Marie Antoinette reference was to start the process of unearthing a rich tradition of rituals and foods from our history that I might make a case for reinstating, or revisiting at least. The truth is, we used to ‘wassail’ and there was a ritual called the ‘first footing’. That’s about it. Of course, there is the Auld Lang Syne sing-song, and we all love a countdown, a boozy cheers, a few fireworks or a bit of fire, but surely there used to be more?
Wassailing was, or is, the custom of wishing one another “Wes hal!” or “Be whole!” while sharing a drink of mulled ale, curdled cream (curdled? and therin lies the death of this tradition), roasted apples, eggs, cloves, ginger, nutmeg and sugar. It was traditionally done on New Years’ Eve and/or the Twelfth Night, and in apple-rich parts of the UK, the custom still prevails with groups singing songs, making loud noises and dancing around to scare off any evil spirits and 'wake up' the trees so they will give a good crop this coming year.
The 'first footing' is a custom whereby as soon as midnight has passed and January 1st has started, people wait behind their doors for a dark-haired (no idea why) person to arrive. The visitor carries a piece of coal, some bread, some money and some greenery - the coal to make sure that the house would always be warm, the bread to make sure everyone in the house would have enough food to eat, money so that they would have enough money, and the greenery to make sure that they had a long life. That seems to be it. This cove would then take away a pan of ashes, presumably from the fire that had burned that night, to signify the end of the previous year and a start anew.
I feel curmudgeonly, but even typing out the rituals above has bored me. What was intended as a joyful paean to the New Year, as a force for renewal bolstered by charming traditions of the past, has ended up with me poo-pooing and decrying our traditions much like those who in doing so I sneered at above. How stereotypical of me. What a product of the very system I rally against I am. Lol.
Here’s the truth: I set private resolutions for myself, although I never discuss them. I also put together a combo package of manifestation and more/less lists each year and then refuse to talk about them too. They go in a desk drawer and never get looked at again. But still, they exist. I am a New Year ritual denier, and worse than that too, I am a secret New Year ritual horder.
In the spirit of coming out into the open, here are the promises I’ve made to myself personally and professionally for the coming year.
No Cartouche:
More:
Structure
Communication with you guys
Growth
Guest writers
Collaborations
Useful lists
Cooking
Less:
Rambling unstructured thought pieces
Existential crises played out through food and cooking
Worrying
Procrastinating the writing of the thing
Personal:
More:
Work
Financial security
Reading
Cooking for large groups of friends
Travelling to eat
Music
Cooking from an expanded repetoire
Less:
Comparison
Jealousy
Silence
Worrying about personal betterment
Youtube
Singles cheese
Cheap bacon
As a final word, I would really, genuinely like to communicate more with you all.
My email address is benjamin@saturdayboy.com. Please send me anything; ideas, questions, statements, comments, offers to go for coffee or lunch, offers to write something for No Cartouche, suggestions for things you’d like to know more about, or discuss, or, quite frankly, anything that might fall in between.
Here is to 2023, may it see us end the year in a better place than we started it, whatever that may mean for you.