As 2016 gets a bit of age on it, and promising I’m only writing this one last time about new year (for this year anyway), my mind wanders back to new years long past. My childhood was spent in the Greater Manchester area of England, in the north western county of Lancashire. One of the great treats as a young child was being allowed to stay up late, though as an adult I soon came to appreciate the luxury of an early night! A late night for a grand celebration was a double-barrel delight. As well as delaying going to bed, one is privileged to witness firsthand the shenanigans that grown-ups enjoy when set loose on such occasions, in the company of friends and family, with a few drinks for good measure. So new year’s eve was a jackpot. Still awash with the gifts and festive foods of Christmas, spirits lifted once more as a new year was eagerly anticipated and joyfully celebrated.

Two particular traditions from that part of the world have remained very much alive in my memory – one is the cooking and eating of Meat & Potato Pie, which I still enjoy to this day. The other is the letting in of the new year in a very particular way – which I usually don’t observe as I rarely make it to midnight these days before abandoning the treat of a late night!!

Depending on who’s home we were holding the celebrations at, I vividly remember both my Mum and her Mum, my Nanna, cooking up their delicious pies. This centre-piece of the new year’s feast was neither fragile nor compact, as the term “pie” might suggest, but was made in a huge, deep dish – it often fed a dozen or more hungry revellers so it had to be hearty. No place here for small-scale casserole dishes – our family pies filled an enormous ceramic mixing bowl with a scrumptious mix of beef, potato and seasonings, which was simmered slowly in the oven till everything was tender and rich. This was then capped with home-made shortcrust pastry and baked till the crust was flaky and golden brown. The marvellous aroma that filled the kitchen on new year’s eve was enough to make you a little crazy even before the party began. The accompaniments varied little: pickled red cabbage (served cold) or pickled beetroot, and a dollop of mushy peas. The pie was served just after midnight, when the new year had been properly seen in; a steaming hot meal was thought to be a fine omen for a year of plenty, “If you start the year with a good meal, you won’t go hungry,” my Nanna always told me.

These days, given my failure to make the distance to midnight but not wanting to let go of the meat & potato pie routine, I’ve modified the tradition a little so we eat this meal at our regular dinner time. It’s another of our moveable feasts so we may have it on New Year’s Eve or New Year’s Day, depending on how it fits the schedule. This year, it was just the MOTH and me and the tiny little pie I baked would doubtless have caused my ancestors to raise their eyebrows. But it tasted of all those wonderful memories and we honoured the red-cabbage-and-mushy-peas regime. It was delicious!

The second superstitious ritual revolves around the seeing in of the new year, also sometimes referred to as the “first foot” tradition. Ideally the first-footer should not be a resident of the house they let the new year into. But whether they were or not, chauvinism reigned supreme and the person needed to be a dark-haired male as it was thought a female would bring bad luck! The likely lad had to leave the house by the back door just before midnight, taking the old year with them as it were. The remaining merrymakers counted down the seconds to midnight and as cries of “Happy New Year” rang through the gathering, the tall, dark, handsome “stranger” knocked at the front door and was let in, along with the new year. Customarily he brought with him some bread, some salt and a piece of coal. These offerings meant that the following year, all gathered would have enough food, enough money and be warm enough. A lovely sentiment!

The mischief my Nanna played springs to mind too … as I got caught up in the final seconds of the countdown one year, she leaned down and whispered, “If you go down the road right now, you’ll see a man who has as many noses on his face as there are days in this year.” In the excitement of thinking the new year might already have arrived, I was poised to run off and find this curiosity with 365 noses. Luckily my Grandad stopped me before I took off, and explained Nanna’s little joke to me!

Many of the rituals we follow bring joy purely of themselves – who doesn’t love the taste of good cooking? – but a deeper pleasure springs from the connection they bring to times past and people no longer present. For me, the New Year’s Meat & Potato Pie is as much about those memories as it is the flavour.

*Ceramic dish from Google images (but the pie is mine, all mine 🙂 )