Being born on New Year’s Day can bring you fame and a bit of luck, that is, if you are the first and in the right hospital.
It is not clear exactly when newspapers and television broadcasts began announcing the arrival of the first babies of the year. But the image of a baby representing a new beginning dates back to ancient Greece. Every year, the Greeks celebrated the rebirth of Dionysus, the god of fertility and wine. Part of the festivities included placing a baby in a basket and parading the child around town.
While there are now fewer baby parades (if any), there is still a lot of emphasis on the little face of a new year. Between 1906 and 1943, The Saturday Evening Post presented his own interpretation of the New Year’s baby in each issue of the first year. And classic movies like Rudolph’s bright new year reinforced the popularity of the little icon while demonstrating the difficulty New Year’s babies have (hint: they get a lot of attention).
So it’s no surprise that being the first baby born in a given year is a pretty big deal. And maybe that’s why some New Year’s babies have won prizes, scholarships and free meals for their parents. While it’s not a universal norm for the first baby born on Jan. 1 to receive gifts, it’s been a common marketing tool for companies to give rewards to newborns for decades.
Take Bonnie Lee Little from Cambridge, Massachusetts, who won a gift package for being born just after midnight on January 1, 1960. But not all of those gifts were for her. Along with gift certificates at local stores, a crib mattress and a set of combs and brushes, Little’s parents also received “two fancy dinners” at a nearby Italian restaurant, 14 dozen donuts and $ 10. In 2007, Toys “R” held a “First Baby Draw of the Year” in the United States with a $ 25,000 savings bonus prize. Diapers.com gave away free diapers for a year to the first baby of 2015 born in New York City, along with a free taxi ride home. Car seats, strollers and gift cards are also common gifts. In some regions, hospitals will release New Year’s babies with gift baskets or certificates for the things they will need during their 12-month reign as a New Year’s gift.
But these gifts are meek compared to the pandemonium of potentially having a world-famous baby. In 1999, a British television program Birth Race 2000 families appeared who wanted to take home the first baby of the new century. Some baby shops even sold $ 50 “millennium conception kits” to help couples get the perfect date (March 25-April 1, 1999 was considered the main window). to conceive a baby of the new year of the millennium).
So what about babies who only miss the midnight birth? There is still a prize for parents in the form of tax deduction for the year. Although the New Year’s Eve 2000 baby competition seemed intense, some doctors say their patients aren’t too worried about accurately meeting the midnight deadline because there’s no exact way to know if a baby is really the first. Larger cities with multiple hospitals usually have several New Year’s babies without clear winners and it is almost impossible to determine a first national baby. But that doesn’t mean being a New Year’s baby is normal; the odds of having a baby in the first minute of the ball fall are close to those of being hit by lightning.
As for babies born first in the next few years, they might be a little less famous. Many hospitals are busting New Year’s advertising as a safety measure against the rise in child abductions. Instead, some families need to contact the media on their own. But that doesn’t mean the New Year’s birth tradition isn’t something to fight for; babies born on the first day of the year are supposed to have the best luck throughout their long life.