CITY WELCOMES 1939

Press, Issue 22599, 3 January 1939, Page 10

CITY WELCOMES 1939

NEW YEAR OPENS IN HAPPY MOOD HOLIDAYS TAKEN IN SUNSHINE GAY CELEBRATIONS ON SATURDAY NIGHT

The New Year has opened with two days of brilliant sunshine over Canterbury. With 1939 there has come the warm holiday weather that has so long and so patiently been awaited. For the first two days at least it has been a New Year of good promise. Making the most of the few remaining days of the holiday period, the city and the city’s visitors went early to the beaches and to the rivers and picnic grounds. At Sumner, New Brighton, and North Beach, at beaches further north, and in the sheltered bays about Lyttelton harbour, hundreds of people greeted the New Year sun. Trotting enthusiasts enjoyed one of the most pleasant New Year meetings in recent years at the Addington course. With brilliant weather, good racing, and money flowing freely through the totalisator, the day could hardly have been better. The Canterbury Park Trotting Club, under whose control the meeting was held, has begun the New Year well with a totalisator increase of £II,OOO. For cricketing people there was interesting sport to be found in the Plunket Shield match at Lancaster Park, in which Canterbury defeated Wellington. There were many spectators also at the New Zealand lawn tennis championships in progress at Wilding Park.

New Year’s Eve It may fairly be said that Canterbury has seldom welcomed the New Year in more happy mood. To the traditional gaiety of the New Year’s Eve celebrations in the Square on Saturday there was added just a little more spirit that the conservative city of Christchurch has in most years allowed Itself. Small groups of people congregated early in the evening, and their numbers soon grew to a crowd, until just before 12 o’clock throngs of young people from dances and picture houses joined them to welcome the New Year. As in other years fireworks were exploded throughout the evening in the Square, the din gradually increasing until the climax was reached with the chiming of the Cathedral bells and the post office clock at midnight. Added to the noise was the sounding of motor horns, the playing of bagpipes, and the singiqg of “Auld Lang Syne.” The city and suburban dance halls and picture theatres had been filled to their capacities, but with New Year’s Day a Sunday dancing and pictures required to end at midnight. This probably accounted for the much bigger crowd assembled in the Square. Traditional Festival For Scotsmen the festival of New Year’s Eve is better known as Hog-j manay, and is celebrated fittingly in Scottish music. Though the traditional Scottish New Year customs are not very well known in New Zealand they thrive, and are honoured religiously among many Scottish families, and where the New Year is being celebrated publicly the sound of bagpipes can usually bo heard. The custom of ‘‘first-footing, crossing the threshold of a' friend’s house as the New Year comes In—ls another that is retained by some people in New Zealand. But the New Zealanders themselves have yet no tradition peculiar to themselves in the celebration of the birth of the New Year.