Far too little outrage was inspired by Saddam Hussein’s hanging. (New York Times ) Despite the heinousness of his crimes, his execution should have inspired widespread repugnance from the civilized world (as the invasion of Iraq should have in the first place). Mockery that his trial was, he will never stand trial for his major crimes against humanity. Insult was added to injury by setting the killing on the eve of Id al-Adha. All in all, this is entirely in the spirit of unilateralism by the US and its Iraqi puppets, and its historical significance is likely to be an inflammatory one.

This is a reprise and an amplification of a New Year’s Day post from FmH in years past:

Years ago, the Boston Globe ran a January 1st article compiling folkloric beliefs about what to do, what to eat, etc. on New Year’s Day to bring good fortune for the year to come. I’ve regretted since — I usually think of it around once a year (grin) — not clipping out and saving the article. Especially since we’ve had children, I’m interested in enduring traditions that go beyond getting drunk [although some comment that this is a profound enactment of the interdigitation of chaos and order appropriate to the New Year’s celebration — FmH], watching the bowl games and making resolutions.

A web search brought me this, less elaborate than what I recall from the Globe but to the same point. It is weighted toward eating traditions, which is odd because, unlike most other major holidays, the celebration of New Year’s in 21st century America does not seem to be centered at all around thinking about what we eat (except in the sense of the traditional weight-loss resolutions!) and certainly not around a festive meal. But…

“Traditionally, it was thought that one could affect the luck they would have throughout the coming year by what they did or ate on the first day of the year. For that reason, it has become common for folks to celebrate the first few minutes of a brand new year in the company of family and friends. Parties often last into the middle of the night after the ringing in of a new year. It was once believed that the first visitor on New Year’s Day would bring either good luck or bad luck the rest of the year. It was particularly lucky if that visitor happened to be a tall dark-haired man.

“Traditional New Year foods are also thought to bring luck. Many cultures believe that anything in the shape of a ring is good luck, because it symbolizes “coming full circle,” completing a year’s cycle. For that reason, the Dutch believe that eating donuts on New Year’s Day will bring good fortune.

“Many parts of the U.S. celebrate the new year by consuming black-eyed peas. These legumes are typically accompanied by either hog jowls or ham. Black-eyed peas and other legumes have been considered good luck in many cultures. The hog, and thus its meat, is considered lucky because it symbolizes prosperity. Cabbage is another ‘good luck’ vegetable that is consumed on New Year’s Day by many. Cabbage leaves are also considered a sign of prosperity, being representative of paper currency. In some regions, rice is a lucky food that is eaten on New Year’s Day.”

The further north one travels in the British Isles, the more the year-end festivities focus on New Year’s. The Scottish observance of Hogmanay has many elements of warming heart and hearth, welcoming strangers and making a good beginning:

“Three cornered biscuits called hogmanays are eaten. Other special foods are: wine, ginger cordial, cheese, bread, shortbread, oatcake, carol or carl cake, currant loaf, and a pastry called scones. After sunset people collect juniper and water to purify the home. Divining rituals are done according to the directions of the winds, which are assigned their own colors. First Footing:The first person who comes to the door on midnight New Year’s Eve should be a dark-haired or dark-complected man with gifts for luck. Seeing a cat, dog, woman, red-head or beggar is unlucky. The person brings a gift (handsel) of coal or whiskey to ensure prosperity in the New Year. Mummer’s Plays are also performed. The actors called the White Boys of Yule are all dressed in white, except for one dressed as the devil in black. It is bad luck to engage in marriage proposals, break glass, spin flax, sweep or carry out rubbish on New Year’s Eve.”

Here’s why we clink our glasses when we drink our New Year’s toasts, no matter where we are. Of course, sometimes the midnight cacophony is louder than just clinking glassware, to create a ‘devil-chasing din’.

In Georgia, eat black eyed peas and turnip greens on New Year’s Day for luck and prosperity in the year to come, supposedly because they symbolize coppers and currency. Hoppin’ John, a concoction of peas, onion, bacon and rice, is also a southern New Year’s tradition, as is wearing yellow to find true love (in Peru, yellow underwear, apparently!) or carrying silver for prosperity. In some instances, a dollar bill is thrown in with the other ingredients of the New Year’s meal to bring prosperity. In Greece, there is a traditional New Year’s Day sweetbread with a silver coin baked into it. All guests get a slice of the bread and whoever receives the slice with the coin is destined for good fortune for the year. At Italian tables, lentils, oranges and olives are served. The lentils, looking like coins, will bring prosperity; the oranges are for love; and the olives, symbolic of the wealth of the land, represent good fortune for the year to come.

A New Year’s meal in Norway also includes dried cod, “lutefisk.” The Pennsylvania Dutch make sure to include sauerkraut in their holiday meal, also for prosperity.

In Spain, you would cram twelve grapes in your mouth at midnight, one each time the clock chimed, for good luck for the twelve months to come. The U. S. version of this custom, for some reason, involves standing on a chair as you pop the grapes. In Denmark, jumping off a chair at the stroke of midnight signifies leaping into the New Year. In Rio, you would be plunging into the sea en masse at midnight, wearing white and bearing offerings.

In China, papercuttings of red paper are hung in the windows to scare away evil spirits who might enter the house and bring misfortune. In Thailand, one pours fragrant water over the hands of elders on New Year’s Day to show them respect.

Elsewhere: pancakes for the New Year’s breakfast in France; banging on friends’ doors in Denmark to “smash in” the New Year; going in the front door and out the back door at midnight in Ireland; making sure the first person through your door in the New Year in Scotland is a tall dark haired visitor. Water out the window at midnight in Puerto Rico rids the home of evil spirits. Cleanse your soul in Japan at the New Year by listening to a gong tolling 108 times, one for every sin. It is Swiss good luck to let a drop of cream fall on the floor on New Year’s Day.

Some history; documentation of observance of the new year dates back at least 4000 years to the Babylonians, who also made the first new year’s resolutions (reportedly voews to return borrowed farm equipment were very popular), although their holiday was observed at the vernal equinox. The Babylonian festivities lasted eleven days, each day with its own particular mode of celebration. The traditional Persian Norouz festival of spring continues to be considered the advent of the new year among Persians, Kurds and other peoples throughout Central Asia, and dates back at least 3000 years, deeply rooted in Zooastrian traditions.Modern Bahá’í’s celebrate Norouz (“Naw Ruz”) as the end of a Nineteen Day Fast. Rosh Hashanah (“head of the year”), the Jewish New Year, the first day of the lunar month of Tishri, falls between September and early October. Muslim New Year is the first day of Muharram, and Chinese New Year falls between Jan. 10th and Feb. 19th of the Gregorian calendar.

The classical Roman New Year’s celebration was also in the spring although the calendar went out of synchrony with the sun. January 1st became the first day of the year by proclamation of the Roman Senate in 153 BC, reinforced even more strongly when Julius Caesar established what came to be known as the Julian calendar in 46 BC. The early Christian Church condemned new year’s festivities as pagan but created parallel festivities concurrently. New Year’s Day is still observed as the Feast of Christ’s Circumcision in some denominations. Church opposition to a new year’s observance reasserted itself during the Middle Ages, and Western nations have only celebrated January 1 as a holidy for about the last 400 years. The custom of New Year’s gift exchange among Druidic pagans in 7th century Flanders was deplored by Saint Eligius, who warned them, “[Do not] make vetulas, [little figures of the Old Woman], little deer or iotticos or set tables [for the house-elf] at night or exchange New Year gifts or supply superfluous drinks [another Yule custom].” (Wikipedia)

The tradition of the New Year’s Baby signifying the new year began with the Greek tradition of parading a baby in a basket during the Dionysian rites celebrating the annual rebirth of that god as a symbol of fertility. The baby was also a symbol of rebirth among early Egyptians. Again, the Church was forced to modify its denunciation of the practice as pagan because of the popularity of the rebirth symbolism, finally allowing its members to cellebrate the new year with a baby although assimilating it to a celebration of the birth of the baby Jesus. The addition of Father Time (the “Old Year”) wearing a sash across his chest withthe previous year on it, and the banner carried or worn by the New Year’s Baby, immigrated from Germany. Interestingly, January 1st is not a legal holiday in Israel, officially because of its historic origins as a Christian feast day.

Auld Lang Syne (literally ‘old long ago’ in the Scottish dialect) is sung or played at the stroke of midnight throughout the English-speaking world (although I prefer George Harrison’s “Ring Out the Old”). Versions of the song have been part of the New Year’s festivities since the 17th century but Robert Burns was inspired to compose a modern rendition, which was published after his death in 1796.

Should auld acquaintance be forgot
and never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot
and days of auld lang syne?
For auld lang syne, my dear,
for auld lang syne,
we’ll take a cup of kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.

Should auld acquaintance be forgot
and never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot
and days of auld lang syne?
And here’s a hand, my trusty friend
And gie’s a hand o’ thine
We’ll tak’ a cup o’ kindness yet
For auld lang syne

However you’re going to celebrate, my warmest wishes for the year to come… and eat hearty! [thanks to Bruce Umbaugh for research assistance]

Far too little outrage was inspired by Saddam Hussein’s hanging. (New York Times ) Despite the heinousness of his crimes, his execution should have inspired widespread repugnance from the civilized world (as the invasion of Iraq should have in the first place). Mockery that his trial was, he will never stand trial for his major crimes against humanity. Insult was added to injury by setting the killing on the eve of Id al-Adha. All in all, this is entirely in the spirit of unilateralism by the US and its Iraqi puppets, and its historical significance is likely to be an inflammatory one.

“Can social scientists redefine the “war on terror”?” George Packer writes in The New Yorker about a new breed of cultural anthropologists who bring their analysis to bear on the current climate of ‘Islamic insurgency’, arguing that it is not ideology but social networking factors which recruit. “All fifteen Saudi hijackers in the September 11th plot had trouble with their fathers…” The thesis is succinctly put this way: “There are elements in human psychological and social makeup that drive what’s happening. The Islamic bit is secondary. This is human behavior in an Islamic setting. This is not ‘Islamic behavior’.” The social scientists, who are pitching their potential contribution to the ‘global counterinsurgency’ effort, argue the intimate need to understand local social particulars to win the ‘battle for hearts and minds.’ The US is actually serving the insurgents’ purposes by trumpeting a global ‘war on terror’, offering an inherently appealing global cause to new recruits. This is no surprise to those who have long understood how it was the Bush administration’s efforts which gave the Iraqi resistance common cause with the jihadists, or turned ‘al Qaeda’ into a franchised brand name for disparate insurrectionists throughout the Islamic world. The article likens Iraq in the context of the global counterinsurgency effort to Vietnam in the context of the Cold War, of course. The US took a long time to understand that the Cold War was only to a small proportion a military conflict or conflicts and in vast preponderance a propaganda battle.

However, I am not sure that social science substantially informed our Cold War struggle either. I was a student of ethnography and cultural anthropology in the early ’70’s before I went to medical school and became a psychiatrist; the article helped me to understand in a new way the relationship between the growing irrelevance of cultural anthropology and our defeat in Vietnam. No administration has ever embraced one of the corollaries of the light that cultural relativism can bring to bear on our understanding of ideological battles — that, if not a Manichaean battle between Good and Evil, the superiority of either side is all relative, all in the eye of the beholder. There may actually be less to choose between the two sides than the ideologues would have us believe; it is inherent that we demonize the opponent in protracted conflicts, as we did in the Cold War and are doing again. The jaded secret agent literary genre so well represented by Le Carré and, currently The Good Shepherd (although the Matt Damon character never seems to get the message despite the ongoing tutorial he is receiving from his Soviet adversary), reflected this relativistic, amoral moral calculus best. So, although I suppose it represents semantic progress to call what is happening now a global counterinsurgency struggle rather than a global war on terror (WoT®), I am troubled that this new anthropological insight seems to be being pitched as an improvement to our propaganda battle rather than helping us disengage from — and transcend — the fray.

Although Packer tries hard to read between the lines, social scientists who want to consult to the administration are of course averse to criticizing their potential bosses. There are indeed several statements in the piece to the effect that there are no prospects for a new mindset until Bush is out of office — as if anyone had any doubts on that score. It is not surprising that Bush thinks like that — let’s start, for example, with the fact that his alcoholism reflects a cognitive style in large proportion based on the effort to reduce diverse and nuanced problems to one one-size-fits-all solution. IMHO, the more important contribution social scientists could make would be to understand how such a rigid worldview as Bush’s could ever have become dominant and been allowed, unchallenged, to make such a dismal global mess of things.

This 403 — Web Page Not Found — page is a clever collection of pointers to post-apocalyptic films and books (a genre I used to think was fiction). I don’t even recall what page I was looking for when I was redirected to this.