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Show New Year's Then and Now. As long as people can remember, there have been New Year parties. The old Romans gave theirs in honor of Janus, the two-faced god. One face looked back at the old, spent year, and one face looked forward to the new, fresh year. They gave presents to him and to each other with the hope, that the new- year would be good to them. Some of the people who lived long ago waited until the end of March to celebrate the New Year, since that was the time that the trees and grass began new life. The Persians Per-sians still exchange presents of eggs at New Year's, just as we do nt Easter. Eas-ter. But the rest of us now do our giving of presents at Christmas. Par-tics, Par-tics, though, we may give to each other oth-er on January 1. In Scotland and England everybody calls on everybody else New Year's day, and drinks punch. Here in America calling has gone out of style, but if we do nothing noth-ing more, we nt least shout "Happy New Year" to everybody we meet on N'ew Y'enr's morning. |