This film was made by local Malton solicitor and councillor Mr Folliott Ward, who was also an amateur filmmaker.  He was also keen on hunting and many of his films are of hunts in the Malton area made in the same period: of otters as well as foxes – see Fox Hunting (1937).  No doubt some of those seen in the films, slightly sozzled, would have been among those on the hunt.  In fact the hunt would meet at Malton Market Place, where the pub in this film, the Green Man, is also situated.  The...

This film was made by local Malton solicitor and councillor Mr Folliott Ward, who was also an amateur filmmaker.  He was also keen on hunting and many of his films are of hunts in the Malton area made in the same period: of otters as well as foxes – see Fox Hunting (1937).  No doubt some of those seen in the films, slightly sozzled, would have been among those on the hunt.  In fact the hunt would meet at Malton Market Place, where the pub in this film, the Green Man, is also situated.  The pub had been in the Tate-Smith family since 1879, and the landlady at the time was Mrs Amy H. Tate-Smith.  It has subsequently absorbed the adjoining Fleece Inn.  It remained in the Tate Smith family at least until the 1990s, and thereafter Alan Tate-Smith became an auctioneer and land agent, and was recently appointed assistant group secretary of the National Farmers’ Union.

Folliott Ward also took in a couple of girl evacuees from Middlesbrough at the beginning of the war, which he made a film of – A R P/Malton Evacuees (1939-1941).

The celebration of the New Year occurs in all the calendars used in different parts of the world.  It isn’t known for sure who developed the first calendar, or when.  Knowing the movement of the sun in relation to the earth was important for determining the seasonal year, as well as for travel.   It is believed that the Chinese had a calendar dating back to around 2637 BCE, although the present one dates from the 14th century BCE.  This, however, is not simply a solar calendar, but rather a lunisolar one, combining both the sun's longitude and the moon's phases – so that the date that New Year falls on changes.  Calendars were also being used in Central America from around 2000 BC (the best known being the Maya calendar).  Given the relation between the seasons and food production, calendars also become central for celebration and religious festivals.

The modern official one, used by all countries, the western civil calendar, is the Gregorian calendar, named after Pope Gregory XIII who decreed it in 1582.  This replaced the Julian calendar, introduced by Julius Caesar in 45 BCE, itself replacing the previous Roman one, which was a lunar calendar.  Amazingly, back in the second century BCE, the Greek astronomer Hipparchus calculated the orbit of the Earth around the Sun (although it wasn’t understood that way around then) to within 5 minutes of its actual time period of 365 solar days, 5 hours 49 minutes 19 seconds.  This gives the solar, or tropical, year, forming a full seasonal circuit. The Julian calendar, still used by many Eastern Orthodox churches, is in fact 11 minutes too long each year, so that today it is 14 days ahead of the Gregorian calendar.

All of this is further complicated by the fact that the effect of the gravitational forces of the moon and the planets causes a change along the line of the plane of Earth to the sun, a little less than 1° eastward every day.  This is the sidereal year, and calendars have been based on this also, worked out according to the position of the stars rather than the sun. 

Getting the dates consistent each year was necessary for the Christian year, in particular the celebration of Easter.  New Year hasn’t always traditionally been a major part of this, although in the eighth century the church declared it to be the feast of Christ’s circumcision – still celebrated by the Eastern Orthodox Church, some churches of the Anglican Communion and most Lutheran churches.  The Catholic Church celebrates it as the Solemnity of Mary, as from 1969, and also as a World Day of Peace, as from 1974.

But having a festival at New Year, coinciding with midwinter, predates Christianity; occurring with the Celtics and in northern and western Europe (although it was sometimes celebrated in March – as it was in England, the Feast of the Annunciation on March 25, until the adoption of the Gregorian calendar in 1752.).  Ronald Hutton quotes a tenth century Welsh text as stating that an old Celtic feast of the war band of King Arthur had, “hot peppered chops and an abundance of wine and entertaining songs” (References).  Well, the peppered chops may be less fashionable now, but the rest still seems to be pretty much still in place.  Judging by this film it certainly was, even with a new world war on the horizon in the late 1930s.

The association of the whole period of midwinter around New Year and, basically, having a good time, including making merry under the influence of alcohol, goes back to the fact that at that time of year there wasn’t much to do on the farms.  Hutton notes the further north you go, the more evidence there is of such celebrations.  Thus Scotland had a distinctive feast, still known as Hogmanay, a semi-secular festival that harked back to the pagan Vikings and Saxons, and the ancient ‘Britons’ – contenders for the derivation of the name hogmanay include Anglo-Saxon, Gaelic and French (see Knightly).  This was given added impetus after the Reformation when the Scottish church (Kirk) banned Christmas as ‘popish’.  In fact, as well as the drunkenness, the Scottish have had a whole host of rites associated with New Year – see Hutton, for example pp. 43-45.  One of these was gathering in a public square for the stroke of midnight, which the Scots brought to London in the 1920s.

Among the other customs associated with New Year was the giving of presents, although this had died out by the early nineteenth century – to be taken over by Christmas instead.  So too have many other customs, such as wassailing (saining in Scotland), where the poor would go around the houses of the more wealthy at Christmas time for food.  Hutton cites this practice, usually of children begging door-to-door at New Year, as taking place “as far south as Richmond” (p. 65).  Associated with this was all sorts of superstitions about good and bad luck coming from whoever one first meets on New Year (usually depending on gender and hair colour!).   Some of these customs are still clinging on, such as first footing, where the first person through the door brings a gift (usually coal in these parts, and sometimes whisky).

Now, virtually all the strange and wonderful customs have vanished, leaving just the making of New Year resolutions as a mark of making a clean break with the old year.  And, of course, the drinking!  Many of those seen in this film are women, and News Year’s eve would have been an excuse for women to have more to drink than they would have normally, and, drinking less often, would have felt the effects more (in fact one of the women seems to say “I say, I’m pissed, I’m happy” – any lip readers out there?).   Notice the glazed look and blurry eyes, of both the men and women, associated with having, in the words of British military slang of the 1920s, ‘one over the eight’.  

Eight might seem a rather high bar, but beer strength was halved in 1917 by Lloyd George (as well as the popular meaures of vastly increasing duty on beer and cutting pub opening times by two-thirds); and those, like steel  workers, who consumed it for work, also drank weaker beer.  Nevertheless, although it is sometimes stated that beer was weaker back then, in 1930-31 the ABV (Alcohol by Volume) was 4.25%, very slightly higher than the average as it is now.  Thanks almost entirely to the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) – now the biggest single-issue consumer organisation in Europe – the quality of beer today is also at least as good as it was then.  Not that beer is much in evidence in this film: more highbrow alternatives being favoured.

Despite all the hoo-ha about the British being binge drinkers, we are in fact only 16th in the league table of beer consumption per head ( the Czechs are well on top) – although the average hides how much some people manage to consume in a single session!  Getting plastered on New Year’s eve is hardly a new thing, but it would have been a lot easier for the wealthy proprietors of the Green Man seen in this film, who probably didn’t have to get up for work the next day.  New Year’s Day didn’t become a public holiday until 1974 – 103 years after it was in Scotland!

References

Ronald Hutton, The Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain, Oxford University Press, 1996.

Charles Knightly, The Customs and Ceremonies of Britain, Thames and Hudson, London, 1986.

timeanddate.com

The Beer Tutor

Lesley Smith and David Foxcroft, Drinking in the UK, Joseph Rowntree Foundation Report