Pantomimes and mummers provided traditional New Year entertainment

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After celebrating a traditional family Christmas at home, most people started to look for various forms of other entertainment with which to celebrate the New Year. A visit to the local pub, mummers plays and pantomimes became firm favourites for many, recalls Stuart Haywood, of Church Gresley.

Ronnie Allan, of Alvaston, celebrates a Cajun Hogmanay at the Assembly Rooms, Derby, in 1996

It was a man with local connections who was largely responsible for January 1 becoming the first day of the year.

In 1752, it was decided that we should adopt the Gregorian calendar to fall in line with most countries who had made the change in 1582.

The passage of the necessary bill through Parliament was overseen by the 4th Earl of Chesterfield, whose country seat was at Bretby.

The main alterations to the calendar were the reduction of the year by 11 days for one year only and that New Year’s Day should be January 1st. This would replace March 25th, the day of the annunciation of the Blessed Virgin (Lady Day), which had generally been celebrated as New Year’s Day since the 14th century.

Prior to that, Christmas and New Year had been celebrated on the same day.

My memories as a young boy of New Year celebrations are very dim. In our household, most celebrating was concentrated on Christmas a week earlier.

When I left school and started earning my own living, the New Year began to take a more important role in my life.

I must admit that my New Year, or Hogmanay, celebrations revolved around the consumption of alcoholic drinks.

During the course of the evening, friends would meet up at a chosen pub or club. We were happy to be in the company of friends. We bought drinks for our pals and exchanged small gifts and stories of events that had amused us.

Pubs very often had a piano and customers gathered around and a sing-song ensued. The sing-song became more and more raucous as the evening developed.

As midnight approached, the radio was switched on in order to hear the chimes of Big Ben heralding the New Year. The coming year was toasted by all present.

I was regularly invited to perform the ceremony of first footing. After midnight, a dark-haired person was invited into various houses, carrying a piece of coal. Such a person, by being the first to visit the home, would ensure good luck for the coming year.

At one hostelry at which I was a regular, the custom was that, immediately after midnight, a drink of warmed milk containing brandy was handed round and enjoyed.

This was a modern version of the wassail bowl, in which a bowl of ale or wine, sweetened and flavoured with spices, was provided and the health of the householders drunk.

It was customary to drift home soon after midnight and tune into the television programmes celebrating the New Year.

The shows were usually of a Scottish flavour, where Hogmanay has always been of more importance than in England. I was not a devotee of the shows as there is a limit to the amount of bagpipes, highland dancing and Jimmy Shand that one man can stand, not to mention Andy Stewart.

A traditional mummers’ play is performed in Derby Market Place

Up to the 1930s, mummers plays were popular in the Swadlincote area.

Groups of people with blackened faces and dressed in fantastic costumes visited homes or pubs and put on small plays depicting the victory of good over ill and light over dark. A favourite topic was St George and the dragon. It seems that the mummers or guisers, as they are also called, have now died out altogether.

There was other entertainment on offer on New Year’s Eve. Popular dances were held at such venues as The Rink, in Swadlincote, and the Kevin Ballroom, in Burton. Bus companies provided late services to allow revellers to enjoy the night to the full.

There were also many cinemas to visit. In Swadlincote, we had two; Burton had three; and Derby boasted about two dozen.

Actress Kitty McShane with husband Arthur Lucan in his Old Mother Riley character. They both starred in pantomime at the Derby Hippodrome in the 1940s

However, the traditional festive entertainment is, and was, the pantomime. It is an entertainment that has its roots in adaptations of fairy tales. Produced by John Rich, it first started in 1717.

In the 1970s, the famous clown, Grimaldi, introduced such favourites as Dick Whittington, Aladdin and Babes in the Woods, to augment the previous favourites of Cinderella and Harlequin.

A 100 years ago, the character of Harlequin, until then a principal panto figure, was being replaced by the now familiar principal, played by a girl, and the dame, traditionally played by a man.

Large theatres and small halls put on these popular entertainments and I have enjoyed productions in many venues over the years.

In 1949, I went on the Midland Red bus company’s New Year trip to the Alexandra Theatre, in Birmingham, to see Robinson Crusoe. It starred Eddie Leslie, a well-known entertainer who, like Jerry Desmond, was principally a straight man to a comic.

Down the bill was a young artist, unknown to me but making a name for himself – a youthful Norman Wisdom.

There is still a wide variety of entertainment on offer for today’s New Year revellers.

This year, however, I will not be going out and joining them. I have reached the age when I prefer to spend New Year’s Eve staying at home, sitting beside a roaring fire, roasting my nuts.

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