Wishing everyone a fantastic year ahead! I spent mine at Allendale’s tar barl. What did you get up to?

Reported to have started in 1858, when it was too windy for a band to read their music, the suggestion of lighting a tar barrel has over the years transformed into a New Year’s spectacle with a pagan influence of lighting the New Year’s fire. Guisers dressed in costume, with blackened faces, carry lit tar barrels on their heads. They proceed three abreast around the village, ending at the town square, where the fiery contents are thrown to the shouts of “Be Damned to He Who Throws Last” onto a waiting pine branch pyre to light the Baal fire.

The atmosphere is merry, the cold does little to chill the mood, and the wind carries the swirling flames feet into the air. The bonfire ignites with bellows of smoke and embers that are whisked upwards in dancing swirls. The band plays Auld Lang Syne and the new year is ushered in. The music continues and people dance around the fire as it burns down to embers, at that point, those brave enough traverse the glowing remains. The square empties of the last revellers, and all that is left is the glowing embers.