Articles

---

Nancy New Year’s visits, giving children gifts on New Year’s Day, did not extend to Southern New Brunswick. This is something I became aware of as a child. In fact, it seemed like nobody at home in Fredericton had ever even heard of Nancy New Year, let alone received gifts from her on New Year’s Day, like the kids did at my grandparents’ home up on the North Shore. 

When I was in Tide Head, just outside of Campbellton, during the holiday season, Nancy New Year visited. But when I was in Fredericton, she did not.  

As a child, I figured Nancy’s absence was a travel-related fairy world issue that I was too young to understand. 

As an adult, I now realise Nancy New Year is a uniquely hyper-local piece of folklore, that dates back generations and is still enjoyed by many North Shore residents, even today. 

Her annual visits have been a long-lived and resilient local tradition. Nancy New Year visited my mother in Tide Head when she was a kid, my grandparents in Glen Levit when they were kids, and their parents in Flatlands when they were kids. 

Nancy New Year appears to be centred in Campbellton, with her visits extending as far as Dalhousie and Bathurst. 

However, like many local folklores forming the fabric of communities, the origins of Nancy New Year have faded with the passing of time. 

Lacking more academic sources on the origins of this tradition, I turned to social media to inquire if Backyard History readers recalled being visited by Nancy New Year. I was promptly inundated with dozens of stories recounting warm childhood memories of her visits. 

Katie Johnson reminisced: “it was such a happy time of year … sometimes you would get a lot of things and sometimes not so much, but whatever it was we were overjoyed at the big find, she would arrive at almost every house in the small village.” 

People recalled their surprise when becoming aware that other people did not practise what, to them, was a key part of the holiday tradition. 

Elizabeth Schoolcraft noted: “I remember hanging a stocking for Nancy New Year's in Glen Levit at my grandparents when we were there at Christmas but she didn't visit back home in Quebec. I don't remember questioning why.” 

While I can’t actually explain why the Nancy New Year tradition didn’t spread beyond the North Shore, there was, long ago, a somewhat comparable gift-giver in southern New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. 

This gift-giver was a Christmas fairy, possibly unrelated to Nancy, named Queen Mab. Back in the late 1700s and early 1800s, she was actually a popular Christmas stocking-filler in the Maritimes; even more so than Santa Claus! 

Lady Jane Hunter, who spent Christmas of 1804 in Fredericton, wrote in her diary that year that Queen Mab was “a great favourite of the little folks in this and other provinces, and if they hang up their stocking on Christmas Eve she always pops something good into it.” 

However, the New Year gift giving tradition doesn’t appear to be comparable anywhere in the Maritimes other than on the North Shore. 

Meanwhile, Backyard History’s readers recalled gifts that Nancy brought good little boys and girls on New Year’s Day, including: puzzles, colouring books, barley toys, ribbon candies, records, cassettes, soda, socks, oranges, books, apples, mixed nuts, chicken bones, hats, noisemakers, crayons, coins, chocolates, and, in at least one case, lotto tickets. 

Margot Ferguson mused that sometimes the gifts were even bigger: “I loved Nancy even more than Santa because she usually brought me stuff like new jeans from Jean Age or a new ski suit from Jim Walter’s (all half price from Boxing Day; Nancy loved a deal!).” 

The coinciding of the fairy’s visit with New Year’s Eve seemed to be serendipitous for parents. Deanna Taylor Holdershaw remarked: “parents wanted their kids in bed early on New Year’s Eve so they could let their hair down and finally take a break.” 

Debbie Maisey echoed this, reminiscing that: “Nancy New Year helped keep all the children good for the New Year’s babysitter.” 

It seems Nancy New Year’s gifts tended to be things like puzzles and colouring books, which seem suspiciously like the sorts of things that would keep children occupied for a few hours, while their parents nursed a New Year’s hangover! 

With the absence of more information about Nancy New Year, I think the only explanation is that there is, indeed, an actual tiny fairy who gifts the good little North Shore children on New Year's Day. 

When Jodi McDavid moved to Campbellton as a five-year-old she fretted that Nancy New Year wouldn’t visit her because she wasn’t from the area. 

However, McDavid soon learned that Nancy New Year wasn’t tied to the location, later explaining to readers of Transmission: Canada’s Culture & Tradition Newsletter, that: “according to local narrative, knowledge of her existence is all that is required for her visitation.” 

This was underlined by Backyard History readers, like Wendy Rudnik Wall, who recalled: “I grew up in Ontario but my Mum is a North Shore girl! No one I knew growing up knew what it was. My Mum is gone now but we still do Nancy New Year in her memory.” 

Indeed, many readers shared that they passed along the Nancy New Year tradition to their own children and grandchildren who continue it right until this day. 

Hopefully, this endearing, long-running, and hyper-local tradition, unique to our region, will not be forgotten, but will instead grow and spread. 

You don’t have to be from the North Shore to be visited by Nancy New Year; all you have to do for her to visit you is know she exists. 

Perhaps now that you have learned of Nancy New Year’s existence, she will visit you, your children, and your grandchildren, and keep this tradition alive!

MORE BACKYARD HISTORY NEW YEARS STORIES:

• The News Boys' New Years Address
• The Governor's New Years Levee Tradition