FACTORALY - NEW YEAR'S

Episode Date: January 1, 2025

Are you sad that you didn't have all these New Year's facts at your fingertips before New Year? Well, we imagine your friends are very grateful that we released this episode AFTER New Year's Eve!Next year... Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

hello hello and welcome to this very special edition of fact orally so why is it special simon it's special bruce because obviously it's not whilst we're recording this, but by the time people will be listening to this, it will be 2025. Happy New Year, everyone. Happy New Year. Oh, I know that one. That's trading places, isn't it? Yes.

Merry New Year. I am from Sweden. But you're wearing lederhosen, my dear. If anyone doesn't know what we're talking about. You haven't been celebrating Christmas properly. Indeed. So for the uninitiated, this is Fact Orally. I'm Simon Wells.

I'm Bruce Fielding. We're a couple of voiceover artists who love random facts. Oh, yes, we do. We get together now and then and we spew our cluttered brains full of knowledge about a particular topic, whatever that topic may be. This week, it happens to be New Year's traditions and the like. Yes. I'll tell you where it's a good place to start. Where?

Back about 35 years ago, I was living the furthest south in London I've ever lived, which is basically just the other side of Battersea Park, which is on the Thames. So literally there was my flat, a park, and then the river. So that's the most furthest south I've ever lived. I learned to ride a bicycle in Battersea Park. Did you? Yeah.

There you go. And everybody was getting ready to go out for their New Year's Eve parties. Suddenly there was this massive fall of snow i mean properly massive it brought everything to a complete standstill huh and everybody was stuck in their flats in the block yeah going i can't get to the party i've bought drink i've got cakes i've got all sorts of things what do i do and and i don't think it was me i'd like to think it was me but i don't think it was me. I'd like to think it was me, but I don't think it was. I said, I tell you what, why don't all of us who can't now go out have one New Year's Eve party in one of the flats, which happens to be ours. And we'll all bring everything that we bought to take to other New Year's Eve parties. So we did.

And we started to have a few drinks and some cake and whatever else there was to eat, some of which we'll find out later. And these people were not all from England. So they were saying, well, we have a tradition in our country that we do this at New Year's Eve. Right. So we did all of it. Oh, really? That's fantastic. So we had people from Spain, people from America, South America, India, all sorts of places in the world.

And they all did what they would normally do on their New Year's Eve. So I kind of learned a lot. It was fantastic. And a lot of what they did on that day is what we're going to be talking about today. Oh, well, that's a fantastic place to start. I was thinking, why on earth are we starting only 35 years ago? Surely it goes back further than that. How much further back does it start?

One of the earliest records of actually having it written down, that there was a specific celebration to usher in the new year, was around 2000 BC in Babylonia. Oh, right. So quite a long time ago. By the rivers of Babylonia. Oh, right. So quite a long time ago. By the rivers of Babylonia. Indeed. And their year began, so different traditions, different cultures, different parts of the

world have different starting days for their new year, obviously. In Babylonia, their new year began with the first new moon that was the nearest to the autumn equinox. So roughly around mid-September, the ancient Egyptians and Persians, their new year started on the autumn equinox itself, not the first new moon after that. The ancient Greeks, their new year started on the winter solstice in December. I think that autumn new year is also jewish new year isn't it oh is that right yeah oh okay okay it's that time of year yeah a lot of cultures have their new year following the sun so you know we here in the west we count 365

and a quarter ish days of the earth going around the sun and that's that's where your your year starts other cultures um go by the moon so the x number of revolutions of the moon around the world rather than the world around the sun which is why places like china celebrate the the lunar new year rather than the solar new year yes so everyone does it on a on a different day at a different time and in in very very different ways but in one form or another it goes back at least 4 000 years okay so how about the january the first new year which is the one that we all sort of mostly celebrate yeah sure so this gets messy bruce sorry that's fine um so back in the original roman republic calendar new year's day was always

march the first why i don't actually know if any of our listeners know the answer oh yes you're obviously subscribing and liking and stuff but you can can also comment. Comment away. If one of you knows absolutely with total certainty, this is why it was March the 1st, and I've missed this out. Please let me know for my own sanity. So it was March the 1st, and then later in medieval times in Europe, it was celebrated on March 25th, which was the festival of Annunciation in the church calendar. Later on, it was the Festival of Annunciation in the church calendar. Later on, it was moved to Christmas Day itself. William the Conqueror came along and moved it to the 1st of January, and then it reverted back to March 25th. Then we adopted the Julian calendar, which was set up in the 1500s, and that moved it to January 1st. it flip-flopped back and forth an awful lot but officially in this country it has been january 1st since 1752 which was the day upon which the uk

moved to the julian calendar which the rest of the catholic world had had for like for the previous 200 years we're a little bit slow on the uptake so we have julius caesar to we do yes and and naming january after janus as well with the two faces you know like the one face looking out to the old year and one face looking forward to the new year all that stuff yeah that's right so it makes complete sense yeah and that's kind of where uh the idea of resolutions resolutions and traditions and things like that come from. A lot of New Year's resolutions come from various religious cultures of sort of wanting to appease the gods, in a sense. Thanking the gods for a good year that's just gone and asking them to bring in an equally good year in the year coming. Oh, it's also a protest as well, because especially, I mean, one of them I guess we're going to have to talk about is how the Scots do it.

I expect so. But the Scots do it mostly because Christmas was banned under the tyranny of the Protestantism of basically you mustn't be enjoying yourself at any given time. Do I mean Protestantism if it's Scottish? Puritanism. Well, yes, that sort of thing. Basically, don't enjoy yourself. Yes.

But that's why the Scots went, well, such you then. We're going to have a really good party, and we're going to have it pretty close to Christmas on New Year's Day. Oh, I see. I hadn't realised that connection. Brilliant. We can't celebrate Christmas, but we're jolly well going to do New Year's. Yeah.

And the church can do nothing about it because it's not a religious festival. Yes. So that's where Hogmanay comes in, isn't it? Hogmanay is the day before New Year's Day, I think. Yes. And nobody knows why it's called Hogmanay. It could be anything. It could be Gaelic.

It could be all sorts. As far as I know, unless you know differently, Simon. I don't, unfortunately, no. No. Again, dear listeners, there's got to be a Scottish listener who knows the answer to that. So what sort of things happen on Hogmanay? As a tall, dark-haired man, you should know this. I do, yes. Brilliant. I was really impressed when I read this. So, again, that idea of how you start the new year is how you mean to go on. In Scots tradition, they have something called first footing. And the idea of this is that the first person who sets foot over the threshold of your house

after the stroke of midnight on New Year's Day, the sort of person that that is will set the fortune of your household for the coming year. So if you get a mean, stingy, grumpy, cantankerous person as the first person through your door on New Year's, you're going to be in for a bit of a harsh year. ideally so they say the best person to be the first footer on new year's day should be a tall dark-haired gentleman i.e yours truly um and traditionally if that person brings pieces of coal shortbread some salt a black bun and a bottle of whiskey with them then goodness me you're going to have a fantastic new year. Oh, yeah. So I'm open for hire, anyone. If you feel the need to reenact this, I'm here. Does grey count? Because I used to be a dark-haired chap and I'm sort of greyish a bit now. I'm sure there's a perfectly acceptable caveat for that. Ex-dark-haired gentleman.

Yes. Ex-dark-haired gentleman. They celebrate Hogmanay in all sorts of unusual ways. I mean, apart from this first footing of the dark-haired bloke looking through your door. In Stonehaven, they have this parade through the town of people wielding fireballs on the ends of chains. There's about 40 people and they basically got these like cage these metal cages that they fill full of like newspaper and i see flammable stuff and they whirl them around yeah on their way on the on the parade through the town to the river right and then when they get to the river they throw the uh the fireballs into the river and that's basically a way of scaring away all the evil spirits,

which is something we'll probably come on to in a bit as well. There's lots of different ways of scaring away the evil spirits. So you start your year with a really positive attitude. But like 40 Scottish blokes whirling bits of fire around in the middle of town. I mean, that would scare me off, let alone any evil spirits. Crikey. On New Year's Day, they have a thing called the ball game in

Kirkwall. And they have the uppies and the doonies, depending on whereabouts in the place you live. Oh, I see. And they basically divide the town up into half each. And they basically play a ball game where you kind of pass the ball. It's basically an entire town having a fight.

Oh, that's brilliant, isn't it? What could be more New Year's-y than that? Yeah, exactly. Before we move further afield, there's a song that goes with this. I was just going to suggest that we brought that up before leaving Scotland, yes. Yes. There is a certain ditty, isn't there, which some people may have heard of. That isn't by Robbie Burns.

No, it's not by Robbie Burns. So the song in question is Auld Lang Syne. Yeah. Unless you're thinking of another one. Nope, nope, that was the one. That's good. It's that one. Yeah, so Auld Lang Syne, sung at every single New Year's party in the Western world since a few hundred years ago.

Often accredited to Robert Burns in 1788. I believe that was the first time it was sort of written down in official manuscript yes um but it was based largely largely based on a on a previous folk song by a fellow called james watson uh of 1711 so quite a while back the first verse and the chorus bear a striking similarity to old lang syne um but then mr burns came along and added a few extra chunks to it and refined it and 10 verses do you know all 10 verses i don't even know the first one do you know all 10 verses i know probably a couple of them yeah but that's brilliant but it didn't have any music to go with it obviously to start with yeah sure so the it wasn't set to music until 1799 so 11 years after its uh first first publishing by by burns um so yes originally it was just a spoken written poem um and old

lang syne the title precisely translates as old long since which roughly translates as days gone by or the olden times or something like that yes um so it's sort of an opportunity to to look back over what's gone by what we've missed what we've achieved and hopes for the future and then it became really popular um especially in america in about 1920 okay there's a band leader called guy lombardoardo who was one of the people on radio doing the New Year's celebration. And after the countdown and the bells and everything, he played it in his 1920 New Year's Eve broadcast.

And it became very popular after that. And then the radio station did it every single year after that. And it just became part of that American thing. But I think it had been part of Hogmanay for quite some time before that anyway. Yeah, yeah. And now you just associate it with large groups of people sort of crossing their arms over and holding hands with the person next to them and shaking hands in time to the song. Which, you know, after a New Year's Eve full of alcohol and whatever other mischief has gone on, can sometimes become a little bit clumsy.

Raucous. Raucous. That's the word. Good word, raucous. Yes. Okay, so vegetables. Okay. Vegetables are quite important, aren't they, in New Year's? Yeah. Isn't there one to do with cabbage somewhere yes that's right so various parts of europe which kind of makes sense you know

cabbage is a big thing in in germany uh coleslaw comes from poland i think cool salad uh cabbage salad yeah so there's there's an abundance of this stuff um but yes in in eastern europe if you if you eat a cabbage based dish anywhere around new year's yeah then it's it's meant to be good luck again we'll say it time and time again start the new year as you mean to go on yeah another food stuff that's regularly eaten at new year's i had never heard of this until I came to research this episode. In America, it's apparently tradition to eat black-eyed peas as a New Year's dish. And apparently this goes back to the Civil War, that as the armies from the North were sort of sweeping through the South

and taking everything that they could, you know, they took all the food in order to to feed the troops as they were going what they left behind was a load of black-eyed peas which were at the time considered only good enough for feeding animals so the soldiers didn't eat them so after the after the troops had had gone through um all that was left were these black-eyed peas and therefore that's that's kind of what the the southerners on the receiving end of this uh would eat and they considered themselves lucky that the black-eyed peas were left behind and so that that sort of became a lucky food stuff interesting because in chile they eat lentils oh do they so similar kind of idea although in chile i think

you're supposed to eat 365 lentils gosh imagine picking those out they're quite fiddly little things aren't they there's lots of other foods that you can eat at new year's that the one that i enjoyed most was the the spanish and the idea in spain is that you celebrate each month of the new year coming up by eating a grape on each of the chimes of the bell that chimes 12. So you eat 12 grapes. Okay. In the Philippines, they take that a step further and they go for 12 round fruits of any type. Are there 12 round fruits? Oh, let's see if we can get some.

Right. Okay. Intern. Intern. Intern. You just, well, you started with grapes. Grapes. So that's already there. Cherries. Apples. Oranges. Right. Okay. Intern. Intern. You just, well, you started with grapes. Grapes. So that's already there.

Cherries. Apples. Oranges. Mandarins. Peaches. Plums. Grapefruit. I'm trying to think.

Pomegranate. Melon. Two left. Come on. There must be. There must be two left. My brain's gone blank circular fruit come on apricots oh yes okay uh figs that'll do yeah there you go so there's at least 12 round fruits um in the philippines apparently circular things symbolize prosperity, wholeness, completeness.

So if you eat 12 round fruits, again, one for each month of the year, that's 12 months of ensuing prosperity and health. That makes sense. But the idea of round things in Singapore, they came up with this like promotion, if you like, where they had a load of like writable balls, these large white balls. And you would write a message, a wish that you had for the new year of good luck. And on New Year's Eve, people would release these white balls into the river that flows through singapore and and they would sort of like be carried out to sea and then sort of on their way to to wherever wishes are granted lovely and it started off as like a quite a nice small thing not so much these days okay they started off with like a few hundred last Last year, there were 10,000. And then when I say they're reasonable-sized balls, they're probably about the size of a – oh, what are the balls called that you jump up and down on?

Oh, space hoppers. They're all about the size of a space hopper. Goodness me. Okay, I was picturing something about the size of a tennis ball. Yeah. No, they're about the size of 10,000 space hoppers. Imagine 10,000 white space hop imagine 10 000 white space hoppers with wishes written on them going going down a river oh man what a sight that must

be well tell you what why don't i put a video link in the show notes in the blog very good so then you can see what we're talking about very nice indeed yes that's the one limitation of an audio podcast you can't see what we're talking about but go to fact orally.com where was that but that was fact orally.com okay yeah got it fact orally.com okay yeah that's where people can get a visual glimpse into our minds now you you just mentioned um wishing spheres floating down the river and out into the sea uh there there are quite a few places where the sea is involved in new year's celebrations obviously it helps if you're near the sea because that's going to be a large feature of your your culture anyway um but i found a lovely tradition

in brazil where on on new year's day um people dress in white clothes to sort of symbolize purity and virtue. And they gather down by the ocean and they give offerings to the ocean goddess Yamanja. They put offerings into a small boat and they push the boat out into the ocean. And couples hold hands and they stand in the water and they jump over the waves. And as each wave comes into the shore, they jump over the wave and they say thank you for something good that happened in the previous year. And then once they've finished their Thanksgiving, they turn around, they put their back to the ocean and they walk back onto the land as a symbol of embarking upon the new year how lovely sounds lovely i'd like to do that so you've heard of the ball drop um yes i've heard of the ball drop in times square so when the new york times decided to move uh from its very posh location to not quite

as salubrious a place uh which was times square it was a little bit rough all the other newspapers thought they're moving up to the boondocks it's miles away they're never going to get the newspapers to the people in time right okay you know because you know needs to be there for the morning needs to be there when people are going to work what they didn't figure was that the the the building that they built and moved into was actually on the new underground system. Oh, is that right? And it literally had access straight from the printing works underneath the New York Times building into the tunnels.

And they could get their newspapers into the middle of New York faster than any other newspaper. Oh, that is smart, isn't it? Which is very clever. I did it. Very clever. And to celebrate this, they thought, we'll have a fireworks display. So they had a fireworks display back in 1905 when they first moved there.

And it wasn't very good. Because basically, all this soot and ash and burning pieces of paper were raining down on the people that came to celebrate. That's really not what you want your lasting image to be as a newspaper company, is it? Burning paper. Exactly. So they thought, well, how else can we do this? I know. Do you know that thing they do at Greenwich? Yes.

Why don't we just copy that? So Greenwich has a red bull that falls at midday. And they thought, we'll do it at midnight. And so they built a bull which was made of iron. It was about a meter and a half in circumference, in diameter. And it was lit by 125-watt bulbs. Okay. So you could see it.

Right. And it was really, really pretty and it was nice. And lots and lots of people came. And then more and more people came. And to the point at which nowadays they have to limit that it's a ticketed event. And I think one year they had something like 300,000 people in Times Square.

Really? And they've had to limit it now to I think 188,000. It's not the biggest square in the world, is it? No, it isn't. Even 188,000 people is quite a lot. The newest ball, the seventh ball they have now, it's more than double the size.

It's 3.7 meters. It's 12 feet wide. It's lit by 32,000 LEDs. And it weighs about six tons. Good grief. Yeah. Oh, there's also 2,600 Waterford crystal triangles in it as well. Oh, of course there are.

That's standard. I would expect that of course there are. That's standard. I would expect that. Yeah, exactly. That's a good thing. And it's raised at 6 o'clock in the evening, very slowly. And then it falls at the first stroke of midnight. And it's always preceded by somebody singing Imagine. By John Lennon?

John Lennon. Yeah. So loads of famous people have sung Imagine for the Times Square ball drop. Wow. Anyway, so at that point, everything stopped and then suddenly there's that bong, the ball drops. Confetti is

released. 1.4 tons. That's a lot of confetti. Wow. And it's thrown by 100 people. They call them dispersal engineers, confetti dispersal engineers there's about 190 people involved in the cleanup because obviously you know you want to get times square clean and ready for for business the following day yes um takes about eight hours 190 people and last year they reckon they got about 50 tons of refuse.

Wow. Yeah. I mean, that must include champagne bottles, I guess. Yeah, yeah. As well as the 1.4 tons of confetti. That's impressive. Isn't that great? I mean, it's terrible, but it's great. Obviously, there are a lot of very flash costumes that are worn.

And clothing is something else that you can differentiate the New Year's Eve, New Year's Day party by. Yes. I don't know about you, but my attire of choice on New Year's Day is to go for a walk on Richmond Park dressed in a kilt. Okay. Wouldn't have expected that. Well, I used to play bagpipes. And i used to play bagpipes and i used to play bagpipes sorry every episode i learned something new about you grace so yeah i was mostly using them on on january the 25th burns night and and new year's eve um and i thought well if i'm only playing twice a year it's hardly worth the bother of keeping the practice up.

So I stopped, but I still maintain the kilt, which is now slightly moth-eaten, but that's the way they're supposed to be. And for some reason, it occasionally shrinks in the wardrobe over the winter. Oh, that's fun. I don't understand why that works. I put it away in the winter and then leave it for the summer and then during the summer it somehow it gets smaller i don't know miraculous that's strange um and then get it out and go for a walk but that's but that's not the only um new year's new year's eve new year's day clothing that that is um of interest around the world apart from bruce's killed i think that would be the most

of interest but um um, no, do tell. What other items of clothing are used around the world? Well, it kind of goes from, you know, in Romania, they dress in fur and they dance in the streets. But one of the things I discovered, there is lucky underwear. I think it comes from China.

Okay. But they assign different things to different colored underwear. And you can actually buy paper underwear in all these different colors and just decide which color you want to wear for New Year's. Oh, wonderful. So if you're into love and passion, then you wear red. If you want some more money, you wear yellow pants. Right. Okay.

Blue. Blue underpants for health. Right. White, blue underpants for health. Right. White, because you can, although they say for peace and harmony. Black, because most of mine are black, for power and focus. Ah. Purple for creativity. Green for freedom and nature.

Pink for platonic love. And orange for professional professional success wow so you could sort of have a rainbow pair of pants that would bring you all of those things at once yes you could or or some sort of like candy stripe yes yes uh now i often like to look into the Guinness Book of Records on this show. I've mentioned it a number of times before. The problem with looking at an official record for anything that happens on New Year's is that the very following year, someone is inevitably going to outdo it. At the moment, Dubai holds the record for the highest number of fireworks used in a single display.

Okay. And the largest number of drones, because that's a thing now, isn't it? Yes, of course. Making patterns with drones. Exactly, yeah. Patterns and sort of pictures of moving animals and things, or writing out messages across the sky and uh in rio they currently hold the record for the largest number of people to gather for a new year's celebration two million people what gathered on the beaches in rio um a couple of years ago for for new year's celebrations

and they currently hold the record for that wow yeah but all the other records you know every year someone else is going to try and outdo it so they don't last very long i've got i've got a record for uh admittedly it's only only 1914 people but they were all dancing at a cailey oh wonderful and they were all stripped they're all doing strip the willow which is which Oh, wonderful. It's quite a violent thing that involves swinging people around and a bit of running about and stuff. So, yeah, it would be quite a thing to watch. I've got no more facts about New Year's. Have you got any more? No, I am all spent.

Well, in that case, shall we sing? No, let's not sing all night. I don't want to inflict that on our dear listeners, do we? I say that, you've got a lovely singing voice, so it wouldn't be an infliction at all. Thank you. So, I guess we need to wish everybody a prosperous and happy and healthy

New Year for 2024. Indeed. Thank you all for listening. We hope that the next year will bring you just as many interesting facts and wonderful episodes of this show as you can handle. Yeah, would you realize that we'll probably have about 70 by next year? Well, listeners. Oh, episodes, right.

Episodes, yeah. Right, thank you all for listening. See you next time. Happy New Year. Happy New Year, everybody. Bye-bye. Bye. episodes yeah right thank you all for listening see you next time happy new year happy new year everybody bye