WELLINGTON COUNTY – While many locals are familiar with New Year’s Eve traditions such as gathering with friends and enjoying fireworks displays, some people in Wellington County are carrying on childhood customs from near and far, and others have forged new traditions from New Year’s moments they don’t want to forget.
Mother Winter
In one little corner of the Maritimes, every year on New Year’s Eve children are sure to carefully hang mittens on curtains with care, with hopes Mother Winter soon will be there.
It’s a magical mystery how she pulls it off – no one’s quite sure how she sneaks into houses and fills the mittens with candies, cans of pop, noise makers, party toys and sometimes other treats and gifts too.
Rockwood resident Melissa Laforge said growing up, she always assumed Mother Winter visited children all over the world – it wasn’t until she was older she learned the tradition was unique to western Prince Edward Island, where her family is from.
That can of pop was once a very special thing for a kid in rural PEI, she noted, as they weren’t easy to come by.
Though Laforge was born in Ontario, her family carried with them many traditions from back home, and Laforge always remembers hanging mittens alongside her cousins, who had each rooted through closets to select the biggest mitten they could find.
The cousins were always together for a sleepover, she said, as the adults were gathering to celebrate too.
And Laforge was sure to continue on the tradition with her own children, who are grown now but still hang their mittens each year.
She said it feels like a nice way to centre children and family on a night that’s often more about the adults.
They fill stockings at Christmas, Laforge said, noting that’s a far more grand affair whereas Mother Winter’s mittens are a little addition.
Laforge likes to wonder how the idea of Mother Winter and her mittens was initially concocted – long ago, “did Grandpa forget Christmas and then make up for it a week later?” she said with a laugh.
Banging pots, pans
When the clock strikes midnight, Barb Little Byers heads to her front door, pots and pans in hand, ready to wish her Hillsburgh neighbourhood an enthusiastic “Happy New Year!”
She’s been doing it since before she can remember, Little Byers told the Advertiser, as it’s a family tradition.
Growing up in the Toronto Beaches area, Little Byers said lots of families would go out to their front porches to bang pots and pans while wishing neighbours a happy new year.
Now a mother and grandmother, Little Byers’ children and grandchildren join her for the tradition whenever they’re home for the holiday.
Eating 12 grapes
To bring good luck throughout the next year, some people are sure to eat 12 grapes during the first 12 seconds of the new year.
Centre Wellington resident Amanda Nicolette said “it is a Spanish tradition known as las doce uvals de la suerte, where each grape symbolizes good luck for each of the 12 months of the coming year and help bring in prosperity.
“Start at the first stroke of midnight on Dec. 31 and eat one grape with each of the 12 chimes, finishing all before the last chime ends,” said Nicolette.
She remembers her Portuguese paternal grandparents partaking in the tradition, and her parents continuing it in their own home.
She’s not sure why her grandparents picked it up, as its more common in Spain than Portugal, but it’s part of her family celebrations nonetheless.
Washing with coins
Erin resident Ashely Maxie has another way of wishing for good fortune for the upcoming year.
Each New Years’s Day, before noon, her family fills a sink with warm water and toonies, loonies and quarters, and washes their hands by rubbing the coins all over their hands, “to bring wealth and prosperity and to start a clean new year.”
Maxie said she’s third generation Canadian Polish on both sides, and her grandparents brought the Eastern European tradition with them when they immigrated to Canada.
They save coins all year to ensure they have quite a few to pour into the sink, she said, and when the first morning of the new year comes, everyone gathers around and thinks about the good fortunes that will come and gives thanks for the prosperity of the previous year.
It will be Maxie’s five-month-old daughter’s first year participating in the tradition this year, and for her five-year-old son, she feels it the first time he will really understand the meaning behind it.
“Previously he just loved the sensation,” Maxie said, and the sound of coins clattering in the sink.
It’s a fun and simple tradition that Maxie said she’s shared with her friends, with many who are not Eastern European adopting the tradition in their own families.
Jimmy Claus
Some kids in Cape Breton hang stockings on New Years Eve instead of Christmas, Fergus resident Doreen MacSween told the Advertiser.
It’s not Santa coming to fill these stockings and it’s not Mother Winter either – some kids, like MacSween, hung them for Jimmy Claus, Santa’s brother, and others, including MacSween’s husband, waited on Mrs. Claus to fill their New Year stockings.
Both MacSween and her husband grew up in Cape Breton but brought the New Year’s stockings tradition with them to Fergus.
MacSween said after all the Christmas festivities, the stockings were an exciting way to start the new year.
There was always an orange in the stocking, she said, which was considered quite the treat during Cape Breton winters.
Hard candy, too, was stuffed inside the stockings, and often whistles, hats, little toys and caramel corn.
“My parents always did a New Year’s party and as we got older uncles would add some coins,” MacSween told the Advertiser.
And though MacSween’s kids grew up in Ontario, they still hung stockings each New Years Eve, and her grandchildren are carrying on the tradition now.
Subs, corner-store wine
The origins of Myra Ritter’s New Year’s Eve traditions were a bit of a slip up, but have become a treasured part of her annual celebrations nonetheless.
It was more than a decade ago that Ritter first celebrated New Year’s Eve with Mark, now her husband. They were in Montreal and didn’t realize reservations would be necessary to eat at a restaurant.
By the time it was clear it was too late, and the couple instead had to pick up fast food sub sandwiches, and stop in at a convenience store for a bottle of wine.
The sub store was out of regular bread so they made do with flatbread, and headed back to the hotel to eat and drink, making sure to take a photo with their not-so-fancy meal.
“Every year since then we have gone out for subs,” Ritter said, and “grabbed a bottle of wine and taken a photograph – the picture always includes the subs, wine and our cats.
“Some good pictures –some funny pictures,” she said.
“It’s a fun tradition that we keep each year. And we are always in bed long before midnight strikes.”
Subs and wine – The first time Myra and Mark Ritter ate subs and drank convenience store wine on New Year’s Eve it was a bit of an accident – they hadn’t booked a restaurant reservation and everywhere was full. But now it’s become a cherished tradition, and they’re sure to get a photo each year, usually along with a few kitties joining in on the fun.
The top photo is from their first New Year’s Eve together in 2012 and the above photo is 10 years later with Hugo, Frank and Nucky joining them. Submitted photos
