The boy in the black cap has been a holiday staple since the dawn of the 20th century, when the Saturday Evening Post began posting funny baby illustrations on the covers of its year-end editions. The magazine’s magazines inspired adults to dress up as babies on New Year’s Eve in often unfortunate attempts to be the life of the party.
According to Britannica.com, the original New Year of the baby was born in ancient Greece. According to reports, it was customary to show a child in a basket for the change of calendar. In the late 1400s, the Germans represented him as a religious figure meaning the Child Jesus. It was secularized by newspaper cartoonists in the 19th century and popped out after the Saturday Evening Post put it on the cover with a top hat.
Here are 16 fun facts about the origins of Baby New Year and its enduring appeal as an embodiment of the hope that the next 12 months will be better than the previous ones.
Straight out of Sparta
During the time of Plato and Socrates, the Greeks inaugurated the new year with celebrations in honor of Dionysus, the son of Zeus and god of wine. One of their traditions was to place a baby in a wind basket and raise the child to heaven to represent the rebirth of Dionysus.
Great baby
Thursday night, a 6-foot-tall mache baby will be placed on the roof of New Orleans ’Jax Brewery. The holiday giant has reigned annually over the French Quarter festivities since 2000, sometimes wearing a Saints football helmet and a purple and gold Louisiana State University diaper. The statue, which survived Hurricane Katrina, will make a final appearance when sounded in 2016 before moving to its new home, the Southern Food & Beverage Museum. Debra Bressler, coordinator of NOLA’s New Year’s Eve event, said the city hopes to have a new resin-cast baby sculpture next year. Residents are invited to submit design ideas.
Friends forever
Baby Year New is frequently accompanied by Father Time, an old man with an hourglass cloak and a scythe. It takes the model of Cronus, the father of Zeus in Greek mythology. When Baby New Year became popular in nineteenth-century publishing cartoons, Father Time was labeled as his elderly counterpart, a symbol of last year. According to the cartoons, Baby New Year is growing rapidly for 12 months and by the end of December it is already Father Time.
It looks like Texas Time
Willie Nelson’s annual New Year’s Eve concerts in Austin feature Baby New Year and Father Texas Time cameos. At midnight, a tracked Father Time makes a grand entrance with a long robe and a wreath of yellow roses. He gets on stage in a Texan-themed carriage and hands an hourglass to Baby New Year, a young man in a white tuxedo and top hat. The transmission of Father Time changes every year. To greet 2015, he came down from the beams riding a metal armadillo.
New year baby
About 500 years ago, German artisans created New Year’s greeting cards with drawings of the Child Jesus, according to Christopher Wood, a professor of German and chair of the New York University department. One of the letters, which is part of the collection of the National Gallery of Art, depicts a young Jesus riding a donkey with an inscription that translates to “I have a good year.” Over time, the religious baby Jesus was transformed into the secular new year of the baby, according to Wood. The first child born on New Year’s Day in Germany is called Neujahrsbaby.
Old Grandaddy ’99
In the late 19th century, Baby New Year began appearing in end-of-year newspaper and editorial cartoons. In 1900, the Detroit Journal commented on the turn of the century with a drawing of a child sitting on top of the planet crying while trying to solve a math problem. Father Time, also known as Old Grandaddy ’99, looks on with a smile. “The poor boy isn’t sure if it’s the last of the 19th century or the first of the 20th century!”
One billion dollar babies
Baby New Year graduated from newspaper cartoons to magazine covers in 1906, when the Saturday Evening Post published its first holiday illustration of a child by artist Joseph Christian Leyendecker. He continued to draw cherubs until 1943, reinventing Baby New Year as an emblem of the American resistance. At first, Leyendecker drew classic images of red-cheeked children with angel wings, but as the world became more complex, he added darker elements, representing the New Year as a soldier, a suffrage activist. female, striking coal miner, nervous stockbroker and heroic tax cutter. In 1936, when the economy seemed to be gaining strength after years of decline, Leyendecker drew a small boy with confetti hats. Although the recovery did not last, the image was indelible.
Coney Island Baby
Giant puppet versions of Baby New Year and Father Time will duel to death in Brooklyn Thursday night, while Coney Island performers present a Vaudeville magazine called New Year’s in Heaven. It’s an avant-garde response to the fall of the Times Square ball, with the literal destruction of the holiday icons, according to Dick Zigun, co-creator of the piece. During the show, mythical characters and superheroes come off New Year’s Eve and Father’s Day, so the puppets are reborn as confetti.
Shaking the crib
Phish drummer Jon Fishman brazenly took to the stage with a hood and diaper at Madison Square Garden on New Year’s Eve 1995. Another band, Leftover Salmon, recruited a friend to play Baby New Year for one of their holiday shows. He came down from the ceiling mounting a giant green pencil. On December 31, 1993, comedian Bobcat Goldthwait surpassed a Nirvana concert at the Oakland Coliseum. At midnight, he joined the band on stage with nothing at all.
Born this way
Grand Master Flash and Verne Troyer (Mini-Me from “Austin Powers”) celebrate their birthdays on January 1st. So do several prominent New Jerseyers, including former Gov. Jon Corzine, Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez and Oscar-nominated actor Frank Langella.
Outbreak of births
Born on January 1, 1946 in Philadelphia, a retired teacher named Kathleen Casey-Kirschling is widely considered the first baby boom. Friday turns 70 years old.
January Giants
Historic New Year’s Eve characters include Betsy Ross, Paul Revere, JD Salinger, J. Edgar Hoover, Barry Goldwater, and Hank Greenberg.
Stop the presses
It is a tradition for newspapers to highlight babies born on January 1st. The task of locating the first child of the year has become more complex. In the past, hospitals advertised birth announcements, but these days, many healthcare facilities have stopped sharing information with the media due to concerns about identity theft and privacy on the Internet.
Shine on
Baby New Year was one of the stars of a 1976 holiday special, “Rudolph’s Shiny New Year,” produced by Rankin / Bass’s stop-motion animation studio. The story centers on a Rudolph, the red-nosed reindeer, who travels back in time and is hired by Father Time to find the missing Baby New Year, a little boy named Happy with an imposing kitchen hat.
Night terrors
Adult Swim’s irreverent animated series “Robot Chicken” introduced a murderous version of the young man in 2014. A segment called “Baby New Year: Resolution Enforcer” depicts a vengeful boy who magically materializes at a New Year’s Eve party. and punches a man for taking a sip of champagne seconds after promising to swear alcohol.
To cry out loud
According to Weather.com, the long, strange wave of Christmas heat is coming to an end this week. On New Year’s Eve, temperatures will submerge in the 1930s, from Atlanta to Boston. If you are fully committed to the idea of facing the cold and emulating a baby on New Year’s Eve, wear a flesh-colored body. It will provide (some) insulation and mitigate cabinet malfunctions.