McLean County as a political institution, the county itself, came into being on Christmas Day, 1830, in the then-state capitol of Vandalia. Wait, what? Why was the legislature meeting on Christmas Day?
“In the decades before the Civil War, Christmas wasn't the major holiday of the season, it was more often New Year's Day, and that tradition will continue after the Civil War,” said Bill Kemp, librarian at the McLean County Museum of History.
Human beings have marked the turning of the year with many different traditions over thousands of years. By some accounts, recognizing the new year dates back at least to Babylon. Some practices have fallen out of favor. Today, American society celebrates on New Year’s Eve, and not New Year's Day, though that was not always the case.
“An interesting, somewhat gone and forgotten tradition involving New Year's Day was referred to as ‘calling,'" Kemp said. "The golden age of New Year’s Day calling in Bloomington-Normal would be the 1870s and the 1880s."
Going visiting on New Year's Day was an upper-middle class and upper-class tradition for young adults.
“A Happy New Year! Welcome the coming, speed the parting year and in merriment and good feeling celebrate the day,” wrote a Bloomington newspaper in 1875.
The mostly unmarried men would call on their female social equals. The ladies would host the gatherings. Often, they teamed up and one home would have four or more hostesses for food, music and conversation.
“The ideal was to be a very genteel, sophisticated, well-mannered procession," Kemp said. "Sure, there would be flirting, some romance, a little bit of courtship. That was part of the reason for New Year’s Day calling."
The longer the day, though, the less polish and gentility the young socialites showed. They would take a nip or three in transit and sometimes there would be sherry at a house as the tour lengthened from home to home.
“By the afternoon or early evening… it would kind of end in a more chaotic and much rowdier affair, and it was often the practice of the local press then to excoriate young men for their misbehavior, for giving the community a bad reputation once more,” Kemp said
Sometimes, the media would reverse the critique and paint women as the problem.
“Beware the snake that lurks within the wine cup, though that cup be offered by women’s dainty jeweled hands,” wrote The Pantagraph in 1875. “What is there in this coarse and vulgar custom, this legacy of half barbaric revelry which commends it to ladies who would smolder with indignation and chagrin if one dared to intimate that they are not intelligent and refined?”
“Women are being blamed, which speaks a lot to the patriarchy,” Kemp said.
Home decorations included arbor vitae, ferns and flowers. There were expectations for dress, behavior and the hours one called as part of this proscribed ritual.
“Young men were supposed to leave a calling card upon entry of the home or upon leaving, usually in the foyer, perhaps in a glass bowl,” Kemp said.
The Museum of History has a collection of the calling cards from the 1870s and 1880s. They often include more than one name. As is the case today, young folk traveled in packs.
“We have a wonderful undated card with the names of John W. cook before he was president of Illinois State Normal University [ISNU] in the 1890s," Kemp said. "Another name on that same calling card is Charles Capen. He attended ISNU and then Harvard University, became a prominent local lawyer, and served on the board of ISNU."
Capen Auditorium in Edwards Hall is named for him. Another card carries the name of a young Joseph W. Fifer, later a governor of the state.
“Calling cards were often wonderfully whimsically illustrated with the symbolisms or motifs of the new year," Kemp said. "You would have Father Time and Baby New Year, sometimes. Illustrated clocks were common, and also sailing vessels or steamships to represent the exit of the old and the entry of the new year."
