Seniors, Is "First Footing" just a New Year thing in the UK?

When I was young (also back in the 40s) 'first footing' was only done in Scotland. If it was done in England then it was by Scots that were living in England, well so I thought until I read your question about it being carried out in Yorkshire. When I was young I would have been living in the south of England so perhaps 'first footing' was not something they did in the area I lived.

When I was married and my parents stayed with us for Christmas/New Year, my Dad would always first foot for me he would go outside with a drink and a piece of coal ready to be the first one over the doorstep as soon as the New Year was win.

Around here no one seems to carry that tradition on, so I suppose it is something else that will die out and only be talked about.

I vaguely remember reading about this as a child in some book. There was a line that went something like "the children waited anxiously to see who the first visitor at the door would be in the new year, because it could portend good omens for the coming year". The salt and the bread part I remember from watching It's a Wonderful Life when it first started airing on public TV in the 70s. When the Bailey Bros. Building and Loan built a new home in a new neighborhood for a family called the Martinis, George and Mary Bailey brought the family a gift of a loaf of bread, so that the new inhabitants might never go hungry, a box of salt, that life may always have flavor and a bottle of wine, can't remember what that was for, probably so that life would be merry.

As you know Malcolm, I am from West Yorkshire and mum used to ask a particularly tall neighbour to knock our door on New Year's Eve (close to midnight) carrying a piece of coal. I don't remember the other things but I think she was then supposed to offer him a drink. Maybe tradition varied slightly or maybe I didn't take much notice or have only a vague memory of this but it is not a tradition I continued. Did your generation continue it and/or did you take it with you when you moved away from the North? I haven't heard of it for quite a long time. Thanks for the memory.

Neighbor (in Baltimore, Maryland) used to do that every year. We would see her husband, just before midnight every year, standing out shivering on the front porch, so his wife could let him in .. he had dark hair.

But I am 66 years old, and that is the ONLY time I have seen or heard of it here in the States and later when I moved to Canada (which is more British than the US).

I never knew the tradition had a name .. thank you.

I always thought of it as a sweet and touching tradition.

The origin of what Londoner's called "Coming over the Threshold" was Scottish.

I remember the tradition back when I was young - 65+ years ago.

My mother's mother was born in Edinburgh, so we always had a

strong Scottish influence on New Year's Eve.

I've never heard of it, but it sounds like a very nice, quaint tradition. Where I live here in the states, it used to be tradition for men to go out at midnight and shoot their guns off. Now it's most likely fireworks. We Americans do like our loud noises, LOL.

in england i've not come across this practice for many years but i thing it happenned when we lived in an old victorian cottage and had coal fires before smoke was banned. that was about 1982. i have experienced it at an official hogmanay formal do in edinburgh, again several years back, and in hong kong when it was a british colony with quite a high percentage of scots in the expat groups, we experienced that in a scottish restaurant.

It was/is done in Lancs when I was a lad many moons ago. I imagine the 'lump of coal' part as gone by the wayside nowadays though

That sounds like a lovely tradition, one of which I was previously unaware (in the US). Also, if it is Celtic in origin, it must have also been practiced in France (Normandy, at a minimum).

Thank you for the education and Happy New Year.