New Year's Fun and Games

Fireworks, photo by J.J.

We got such a nice response to the games and trivia in our Thanksgiving issue that we thought we would do another one for New Year's Eve/New Year's Day. We have included some ways to celebrate the season in positive ways, as well.

How much do you know about New Year's history, customs and lore? Take this little multiple choice quiz. You will find the correct answers scattered through the text of this article. Mark your answers, and check later to see if you were correct. (You can copy this quiz, and the one that follows it, or just download a PDF version of both here.)

New Year's Trivia Quiz
1. We have evidence that the New Year was celebrated first by
    Babylonians            Egyptians                Greeks
2. The first celebrations were held in the
    Winter                Spring                Autumn
3. The New Year was shifted to January 1st by
    Ptolemy                Julius Caesar            Pope Gregory
4. Ancient New Year's celebrations were marked by
    Meeting with friends        Exchanging gifts        Noisy parties
5. The first person to enter a Scottish home after midnight New Year's  Eve          must never be
    An expectant mother        A blond man            A red-haired girl
6. The Chinese ‘zodiac’ consists of a series of 12
    Gods and goddesses        Ancient warriors        Animals
7. The Chinese calendar is different because it
    Has more than 12 months     Is lunar, not solar    Is the same each year
8. Besides the long groups of dragon dancers, a popular dance features a
    Lion                    Tiger                         Elephant
9. Before the celebrations the Chinese people
    Clean their houses    Pay their debts    Apologize
10. In parts of Asia where there are Buddhist temples, the bells ring
        25 times            56 times                108 times                          

Match The Country With the Custom

Countries all around the world have special customs and superstitions that they associate with the passing of the old year and the beginning of the new one. Draw a line between the custom and the country that you believe celebrates it. The answers are at the end of this issue. Don't peek!
............................................................................................................................
CUSTOMS                                                                   COUNTRIES
1. Eating 12 grapes, 1 for each stroke of                 a) U.S.A.
    the clock at midnight
2. Throwing loaves of bread on the door -              b) Peru
    steps of friends and family
3. Huge fireworks displays over the                        c) Greece
    Southern Ocean
4. "Friendly" fistfights refereed by the                    d) Denmark
    local police
5. Wearing polka-dot clothing, eating                      e) Columbia
    round foods, and tossing coins
6. Eating pork, black-eyed peas, and                       f) Ecuador
    collard greens for luck
7. Carrying empty suitcases around in                    g) Philippines
    hopes of vacation travel that year
8. Hang an onion on the front door on                    h) Ireland
    New Year's Eve and hit your children
    on the head with it the next day
9. Burning scarecrows stuffed with paper              i) Australia
    at midnight to scare away bad luck
10. Breaking plates and glasses against                  j) Spain
      the doors of friends and neighbors


Did You Know?

The first known celebration of the New Year was by the ancient Babylonians. It was celebrated on the first new moon after the vernal (Spring) equinox. The dates of the vernal and autumnal (Fall) equinoxes change over time due to movements of the earth in relation to the sun. I was born on the autumnal equinox, but it has moved a day in just my lifetime. Most cultures celebrated in the spring near the time for planting, or in the fall around harvest time. The Babylonians celebrated by exchanging gifts and having loud parties. As time went by, different cultures chose different kinds of celebrations. Some went on for a week or more with a different kind of celebration on each day.      

New Years didn't fall on January first until 47 BC  (BCE), when the Roman emperor Julius Caesar (yes, that one) introduced the Julian Calendar. By this time people were decorating their homes with laurel branches. The Romans also made sacrifices to various gods and goddesses at this time. It was still celebrated on different dates in various cultures — and still is in some. In 1582, Pope Gregory VIII established it permanently on January first. Most of the world still uses the Gregorian calendar, so most countries celebrate it on that date.  And the noisy parties, at least, still continue.

Some traditions are very old. The blond man the Scots don't want to see as the first person to step across their threshold on New Year's Day represents a Viking raider who has not been around for nearly 1000 years!

Chocolate "money"

New Year's food traditions are found in many parts of the world. You may have heard about eating black-eyed peas in some regions of the U.S. This supposed to be lucky, especially for finances. What is surprising is that so many very different cultures have similar traditions involving foods eaten on New Years to increase financial prosperity. And usually the foods are round, signifying coins!

Temple bells

In parts of Asia where there are Buddhist temples, the bells are rung 108 times in succession. This represents the number of sins that the human race is believed to commit, with devout hopes that some of them, at least, will disappear in the coming year.

The Chinese New Year follows a lunar (moon) calendar, not a solar (sun) calendar, so the dates differ from year to year.  In 2021, the celebration begins on February 12th and continues until February 26th. Preparations begin about a week before the actual event. First comes a serious housecleaning, sweeping out the old year. Cupboards are restocked and new clothing is purchased. It is imperative that associations with friends and neighbors begin the new year on good terms; therefore, debts need to be paid, borrowed items be returned, and apologies spoken for any harsh words or slights that happened during the year.

A Lion dance is often performed to bring good luck. Dancers wear decorative costumes representing lions. Of course, lions are very dangerous animals to have around, so the costumes have mirrors on their headdresses so they will scare themselves and eventually go away.

Oxen statue

The Chinese calendar is established in a 12 year cycle. Each year of the 12 is represented by a different animal (often called the Chinese Zodiac). The year 2021 will be the year of the Ox (2020 was the year of the Rat). After that the years progress with the years of the Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Sheep. Monkey, Rooster, Dog, Pig, and the Rat again.

A New Slant On an Old Game

Here's a new way to play an old game. You have probably played a lot of paper-and-pencil games in which you have to write down as many answers as possible within a certain length of time.  (Goodness knows that all of us who have attended baby showers through the years have done this!) Perhaps you have done this by making words from “Happy New Year”. This time I suggest you use “Auld Lang Syne” instead. Both titles have the same number of consonants, plus 'y', which can be used as a vowel sometimes as well as a consonant. But "auld lang syne" has a third vowel, which makes a big difference. Give the players each a sheet of paper with "auld lang syne" written or printed at the top. No capitalized words, slang, or trademark names are allowed. If a word isn't spelled correctly, it doesn't count. Players may challenge each other's words. No letter may be used more times in a word than it appears in "auld lang syne". All words must have 4 letters or more. A time limit is set for the game. Simple prizes may be given for the most correct words, the longest word, etc.

There are other simple, "old-fashioned" games that work well for this type of celebration. These include "I Spy", charades, an indoor treasure or scavenger hunt, and old favorite board games like Monopoly. Many of them can, with a bit of planning and ingenuity, also be played in video chat modes.

A New Year's Tree??

Once the Christmas decorations have been removed from the tree and safely packed away, redecorate with "fun" items, some of which can even be thrown at the tree.  Ideas include paper chains, greeting cards, lengths of tinsel, comic-book cut-outs, strings of popcorn and/or cranberries, wads of silver "icicles", and pictures the children have drawn for the occasion.  If your tree is artificial, you can leave it up as long as you like. If it is a real tree that needs to be recycled, then clean-up on the following day can be fun, too.

 

Begin The New Year With Thanks

Take the time to write a note, send a text, or make a phone call to each person who has made your life better in some way during the past year. That includes people who have cheered you, supported you, comforted you and inspired you. I hope it also encourages you to do the same things for other people during the new year that is just beginning. If you have children, encourage them to all or write notes to grandparents, teachers, neighbors and friends.

Another thing you might want to do is to choose a local, nation-wide, or world-wide organization and make a donation to them to help start their yearly activities. For example, our little town has a volunteer fire department which has not only protected us, but has also helped with the awful regional forest fires we suffered this year. Town and school libraries are always grateful for donations. Your local SPCA or animal shelter can always use help. Look around. You can find a cause to champion.

Whether you celebrate the New Year on January first or some other date, how you and your family celebrate should set the tone for the rest of the year.  Be sure to make good choices.

Happy New Year! Best wishes from a person from the Year of the Horse and one from the Year of the Monkey.

 

 

Answers to the trivia questions: 1. Babylonians 2. Spring 3. Julius Caesar, but give yourself half a point for Pope Gregory, who made it a law 4. All are correct 5. Blonde man 6. Animals 7. Lunar 8. Lion 9. All are correct 10. 108   

Answers to matching quiz; 1. j 2. h 3. i 4. b 5. g 6. a 7.e 8. c 9. f 10. d                           

This post by Annake's Garden is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Unfinished Business: Early Winter Q & A, 2020

"Late Afternoon, Early Winter" by J.J.

Hi, Annake.  We are high school students who want to ask some questions about some of your recent posts. Please don't show our names or school because your articles are not on our reading list, but our lame on-line classes are pretty much just reading the textbooks and doing the tests that come with them. We had a teacher last spring who suggested we ought to read your Earth Day blog post and gave us the link. She also wanted us to read the one for Arbor Day. Then we looked at the 'All About Color' ones and liked those too. They are all different, but the last one was the best one yet, and we wanted to know more about it. And we want to know if you are going to do another Time Travel one? Or what is next for the Color ones?

Okay, then: Welcome, Mystery Guests! We are indeed planning more posts in the 'All About Color' series, and I have a few things to say about them today.  But first of all I want to shout out congratulations to Ishana Kumar. She won a top science prize for her project on the perception of imaginary colors. She is a 12-year-old 7th grade student who had to work within the restrictions of the corona virus guidelines. Her project may lead to a better understanding of some eye diseases, as well as  of cognitive processing. You Go, Girl!

We have two new 'All About Color' features in the works, one for late Winter and one for Spring.  I'm not sure yet which one will go up first, but the topics are: "The Psychology of Color" and "The Physiology of Color". The first one will deal with subjects like imaginary colors, camouflage, how color is used to sell things, how colors affect our moods, etc.

The second will discuss not only how human eyes work and the problems that may afflict human vision, but will also deal with some of the remarkable ways animals see things that humans cannot.

Now, as to the Time Travel article, it was designed to get you interested in what was going on at a pivotal time in Earth's history. I have never been convinced that all of the many species that appeared during the so-called Cambrian 'Explosion' just appeared out of thin air with no links to a developmental past. Remember the sediments collected from the lowest part of our hypothetical dive? When we examined those in our respective labs back in our own time, what do you think we would have found?  Remember that they were sheltered by the sediments from the increasing supply of oxygen on the surface. Many such organisms are alive and thriving in oxygen-free or oxygen-poor environments such as deep sea deposits, caves, and deep mines today.

Black Smoker in Atlantic

Now I am going to give you a "magic word": EDIACARAN. And here is a link to follow (These Bizarre Ancient Species Are Rewriting Animal Evolution) into a field that is growing rapidly with findings from many parts of the globe. Read the side entries. Learn as much as you can and make your own decisions about the 'Explosion'.  Keep track of the dates given and I think you will see why I set the time for our 'expedition' when I did. Have fun. Look hard at everything. Scientists were once "stumped" by the strange appearance of one of the Ediacaran specimens until someone else walked into the room and pointed out that they were looking at it upside-down. (Look up Hallucigenia: the "Which end is up?" controversy has been solved by new, better fossils and the electron microscope.)

Ask questions. Never stop asking questions. Probably the most important word in any language is "Why?" As any harried parent will tell you, it is usually the first question children ask, and they employ it ruthlessly. The second most important question is probably "How?".  But very high on my personal list of important questions is the one that begins,"But what if...". That one will take you places!

As for whether there will be another tine travel adventure, J.D. and I will think about it. Personally, I would like to look at the relative speed at which birds and mammals repopulated the planet after the disappearance of the dinosaurs. In the meantime, stay safe and well — and do your homework!

You have shown several new border patterns lately as outlines or graphs.  I work better if I can see things done in finished needlepoint. Is it possible to show some of the patterns done that way?

Of course it is. I will have to look at some back issues. so it may be a while before I get caught up, but I will put several on this post. Some of the ones from "Something Fishy" were not meant for needlepoint or cross-stitch, but rather for outline stitching or crewel.  But I do samples of new counted cross-stitch, tent stitch, or solid upright Gobelin stitch before I file them, so those should be fairly close to the surface. Choose your own color schemes. You may want to do figures like flowers, hearts, and strawberries in natural or conventional colors, or you may want to experiment. If you are following a geometric design, then the light and dark values should stay as close to the original design as possible, regardless of the color scheme. Happy stitching!

We had a lot of fun with the Thanksgiving games. Thanks for those. How did you think of them? Are you going to do more of them in future blogs?

You are very welcome. I'm so glad you liked them. I always used games in all my years of teaching, so I'm accustomed to making them. They are more fun than tests (and can tell a teacher just as much about the progress of the class). We played a lot of forms of Jeopardy, too. Look for New Year's games on December 26th, for sure, and there may be something for Valentine's Day, but that hasn't been decided yet. I'm thinking about something for Easter, too, especially if travel and gathering restrictions haven't been lifted by then.

I loved the mask! Did you make it? Have you made any others?

I did not make it. It was made for me as a gift and meant to be worn on my chest as a neckerchief, but it was easy for me to adapt it into a mask. I am working on a couple of designs of my own. I had a whole box of broken necklaces, "orphan" earrings, beads and other items that could easily adorn a bandanna. Unlike the original design, which I hope to wear as a neckerchief again someday, the new masks will have decorations that can easily be removed so that the mask can be laundered. Look for pictures sometime in mid-January.

 

 

Hey, I liked the fish stories. Got another one?

We were fishing one of the many mesa lakes early one summer morning. I like peace, quiet, and space when I fish. All three were somewhat lacking where we were and I was about to suggest we move. Some guy with an over-sized, loud, power boat was zooming in and out between boats bragging about his boat and his catch, although he only showed a medium-sized rainbow trout.  He swung around ahead of us and my line went slack. I was pretty sure he had cut it, which did not endear him to me.

I was reeling in my line. When it broke the surface, I saw I had a passenger — a crayfish nearly a foot long. Just then Mr. Obnoxious pulled up alongside, too close for comfort.

"What are you fishing for, Honey?", he yelled at me.

"Oh, no," I called back in my sweetest voice. "I'm not fishing. I'm teaching this crawdad to water-ski!" I held up the crustacean in question.

With a facial expression somewhere between affront and alarm, Mr. O. gunned his motor and roared away to annoy people in another part of the lake. Once he stopped laughing, my husband started the trolling motor and moved off in the opposite direction to find a more peaceful spot. Then I gently released the crayfish, thanked it, and dropped it back into the lake.

I wish you fair weather and good fishing.

 This post by Annake's Garden is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.