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Show New Year Calls Were All the Rage In US. in 1900 The custom of making short calls-; on New Years' Day was in full! swing in the United States around' the turn of the century. Newspapers carried columns of 'at home' notices specifying the hours during which visitors would be received. Hosts and hostesses, having duly received, closed their open house to become guests at somebody else's. ' 'Open House' on New Year's Day was introduced into America by the Dutch who settled in Newi Amsterdam. Friends were accuse tomed to dropping in to offer the-, compliments of the day and re-1 freshments centered around homemade home-made snacks, plus the host's favorite fav-orite concoction of punch. The custom grew with the coun-j try, finally attaining the newspaper newspa-per announcement stage, with its; eventual time-table and scurrying; from one 'open house' to another. It was inevitable that some guests, after a succession of nine or tern punch bowls, sometimes embarrassed embar-rassed their tenth or eleventh hostess; host-ess; and receptions sometimes were-'crashed' were-'crashed' by total strangers tempted tempt-ed by the possibility of free punch. Perhaps it is just as well that the publicly announced New Year reception is no longer a la mode. If only a small percentage of city dwellers inserted 'at home' notices: in their favorite metropolitan newspapers, news-papers, what colossal editions-would editions-would result, what headaches for everybody, from the swamped linotype operators to the staggering stagger-ing newsboys. |