New Year C – Knitting Pattern booklet
Date of issue: 09.11.2018
Author: Maja Tomažič
Motive: Knitting pattern
Printed by: Agencija za komercijalnu djelatnost d.o.o., Zagreb, Croatia
Printing Process and Layout: 4-colour offset in self-adhesive sheets of 50 stamps and self-adhesive booklets of 12 stamps
Paper: 100 g/m2 self-adhesive
Size: 26.00 x 35.00 mm
Perforation: Serpentine die cut
New Year celebrations are a relatively young cultural phenomenon, at least as far as noisy celebrations on the last night of the old year are concerned. They developed at around the time the nineteenth century became the twentieth, although it was not until after the First World War that they became a mass phenomenon. New Year celebrations have always been accompanied by a variety of symbols representing wishes and also serving as a prediction of the events of the year about to begin. So it is with this new stamp, where this prediction or forecast is represented by a knitting pattern containing a new loop.
Far older symbolism surrounds the practice of decorating an evergreen conifer (spruce, pine or fir). In post-war Yugoslavia this tree was given the official designation of "New Year's Fir". This was the name not only of the symbolic tree itself but also of a New Year celebration that was intended to take the place of the rich traditions of St Nicholas's Day and Christmas, above all at the public level. In the hope of promoting a generalised acceptance of the "New Year's Fir" holiday and a gradual abandoning of St Nicholas's Day celebrations as a public event, the authorities endeavoured to portray the former as a family celebration. Their efforts to transfer the New Year's Fir celebration to the family environment did not only have an ideological motivation. Above all, it was a practical, financial question, in that the public giving of gifts to children was becoming increasingly expensive and the authorities were eager to transfer part of this burden to family budgets. So the holiday was given the name "New Year's Fir" – in capital letters, to underline its importance. The figure of Grandfather Frost did not appear until 1952. St Nicholas's Day celebrations continued to be organised after the liberation and the end of the Second World War, beginning in Ljubljana in 1945 with an event in the Tabor sports hall featuring fairy-tale forest scenery, stuffed animals, acrobats, musicians and even partisans with their weapons and tales of partisan fighters. Gradually, however, the New Year's Fir gained in importance and St Nicholas was slowly driven out of public life. Young and old alike began to be invited to New Year's Fir celebrations. Putting up decorated fir trees in towns and villages, in both public and private spaces, became increasingly popular, although the fir trees were frequently mere spruces!