First Foot Day

What the day is

First Foot Day is observed on January 1. The custom holds that the first person to cross a threshold after midnight sets the household's luck for the year, and it is still practiced in Scotland and northern England.

Origin and background

The first-foot was not supposed to arrive empty-handed, and the traditional gifts are a list of things a house should never lack. Coal stood for warmth, bread or shortbread for food, salt for flavor and preservation, a coin for money, and whisky for good cheer. Handing them over at the door is a compressed set of wishes for the year rather than a set of presents.

The preferred first-foot was a dark-haired man. The explanation repeated everywhere is that a fair-haired stranger at the door would have suggested a Viking raider, which is a satisfying story with no early evidence behind it and appears to be a much later rationalization. What the records do show is that the preference itself was taken seriously, and that households sometimes arranged in advance for a suitable neighbor to arrive.

The wider context explains why any of this loomed so large. In Scotland the Reformation left Christmas heavily suppressed, and it was not restored as a public holiday there until 1958. For centuries the midwinter celebration that mattered was Hogmanay at New Year, which is why Scottish New Year traditions are so much more elaborate than the English ones and why the customs attached to the first minutes of January survived in such detail.

Nineteenth-century accounts describe streets busier between midnight and one in the morning than at midday, as people set off to first-foot each other across a whole town.

How to take part

• Arrive at somebody's door after midnight carrying something, which is the entire custom.
• Bring the traditional set if you can: coal, bread, salt, a coin, a drink.
• Go to a neighbor you would not otherwise call on. That was always the point of it.
• Let whoever is dark-haired go first, purely for the sake of the form.
• Read about Hogmanay, which is a considerably bigger subject than New Year's Eve elsewhere.