During New Year’s Eve people often set off firecrackers and make noise sometimes referred to as ‘rough music’. Most likely a relic of an earlier practice of driving away the negative forces of the old year and welcome in the more positive forces of the new year. New Year’s Eve is threshold time not being the old year and not the now one being betwixt and between. Since transition happens a midnight, another threshold time, which adds to it’s being an uncanny time. Because of their ambiguity make thresholds a place of supernatural and uncanny activity. Twilight and dawn are thresholds between night and day and are magical since they are between the two. Many spirits were believed to congregate at crossroads due to the fact they are four directions at once. It helps they are places of confusion where travelers could easily get lost. Therefore, the crossroads could prime places for vampires, werewolves and other evil spirits to find easy prey.
At New Year’s special rites were used to set the stage for welcoming in the hope of a better year ahead. With the betwixt and between of the New Year all manners of ways to chase away the year. Beside rough music some would take a broom and sweep from the back door to the front to chase away the shadows of the old. Many people would go to church on New Years to get the new year off on the proverbial fist foot. Wassailing on the New Year is offering a toast to the New Year as a way of toasting the New Year. Such a toast would naturally occur at midnight. And simply saying Happy New Year could also be considered a good lich charm to get the new year off on the fist foot. And So, It Goes.