By PATRICIA SANDERS
“The Health of the New Year.”
Source: Perrysburg (Ohio) Journal, December 27, 1912
With New Year’s festivities just behind us, this seems like a good time to ponder how the New Year was celebrated in Montavilla of old.
To find out, I perused Montavilla newspapers from around 1900 to 1930. Since neighborhood newspapers across the country reported daily life events as well as the more significant news, we can get glimpses into daily life at the household level. In these personal columns, we learn about New Year’s Eve parties and local entertainment as well as New Year’s Day events.
New Year’s Eve parties
A number of New Year’s Eve parties show up in the personal columns. These were more than social get-togethers. Sometimes they were costume parties. Sometimes they included music and dancing as well as games and costumes.
The Montavilla Times of January 5, 1928 dedicated a two-column article to Mr. and Mrs. Carl Peterson’s New Year’s Eve costume party, probably because its theme was unusual. The Times reported that the hosts and most of the guests dressed in what they considered to be Native American garb. Leather and beads aplenty were there. The article uttered not a peep about cultural appropriation, something that has become an issue in recent decades.
At the Peterson’s party, there was dancing, with music provided by two violinists. But in the early 20th Century, alternatives to live music were available, first with phonographs and later with radio broadcasts.
Victor III Disc Phonograph (Gramophone), c. 1907.
Source: Wikimedia
New Year’s Eve radio programs
Radio technology had its roots in the 1890s, but the boom in radio broadcasting began in the 1920s. In Portland, the Oregonian’s KGW radio station went live in 1922. On December 31, you could tune in and listen to special New Year’s Eve musical programming. The 1928 KGW program began with dinner music at 6 p.m. and ended with a special New Year’s frolic from 10 p.m. to 1 a.m.
For a brief time, Montavilla had a store where locals could purchase radios and antennas. H. A. Hall’s radio store, shaped like a table-top radio, opened in 1927 at the corner of 90th Avenue and Stark Street.
Left: H. A. Hall’s radio store. Right: a table-top radio in a Hall’s radio store ad.
Source: Montavilla Times, November 3, 1927
Watch-Night parties and services
Several Montavilla newspaper items mention Watch-Parties or Watch-Night parties. Sometimes this is another name for New Year’s Eve parties where celebrators wait up to “watch” the new year arrive.
But sometimes churches held Watch Parties following the evening services.
In America’s Black communities, Watch-Night meant something different. There Watch-Night or Freedom’s Eve celebrated on the eve of Emancipation Day. On January 1, 1863, Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation declared enslaved people in the Confederate States to be free.
I did not find this mentioned in the Montavilla newspapers, but articles about Watch-Night and Emancipation Day occur regularly in the Portland press.
“Watch-Night Services,”
Source: Oregonian. January 1, 1906
Although the Montavilla newspapers failed to mention these important holidays, Montavilla’s growing Black community may have celebrated in Montavilla or at commemorative events sponsored by Portland’s large African American churches.
By 1916, Montavilla’s Black population was sizable enough to support its own Mission congregation. In 1919, they opened Shiloh Baptist Church in a house at the corner of NE Everett Street and NE 76th Avenue. For more on Shiloh Baptist Church see my previous story about Montavilla’s first Black church.
The Montavilla Mission congregation, 1916.
Source: The Sunday Oregonian, July 30, 1916
Out on the town
Besides parties, in Montavilla of yore there were also big New Year’s events at meeting halls and theaters.
Sometimes balls took place in large venues. For example, in 1906, the Knights of the Maccabees, one of Montavilla’s several fraternal organizations, hosted a New Year’s Eve masquerade ball in Woodward Hall.
Two frames of a comic strip by pioneering cartoonist R. F. Outcault (1863 – 1928) lampooning a masked ball.
Source: Oregon Daily Journal, April 18, 1909
Woodward Hall was one of several large venues in Montavilla which hosted public meetings and social events. This hall opened as a theater around 1896 at the southwest corner of NE Everett Street and NE 76th Avenue. It continued as a venue for various evening entertainment until it was sold in 1909. Now, a 1920 four-plex has replaced the old theater building.
Woodward Hall occupied the southwest corner of NE 76th and NE Everett.
Photo source: Beaver State Herald, January 4, 1907
Midnight matinees at local movie theaters provided another New Year’s Eve option in Montavilla.
The midnight matinee at the Granada Theatre at 7600 NE Glisan St. offered a diverse program beginning at 11:15 p.m. It included a vaudeville show, a new comic movie, and community singing. The theater also gave the audience funny hats and serpentine streamers to augment the festive atmosphere.
“How to Handle Women” was the New Year’s Eve feature at the Granada Theatre in 1928.
Photo source: Wikimedia
New Year’s Day resolutions and church services
New Year’s Day was a time for resolutions, church services, and meals with special foods.
While acknowledging the difficulty of keeping New Year’s resolutions, the Montavilla Times of January 3, 1929, suggested a few for their readers:
Source: Montavilla Times, January 3, 1929
On January 1, members of Roman Catholic, Lutheran, and Anglican Episcopal faiths might head for their local church to celebrate the circumcision and naming of Jesus.
New Year’s Day feasts
New Year’s Day was also a time for sharing special holiday foods. Although not reported in the local newspapers, Montavilla’s ethnically diverse population implies that special holiday foods would have appeared on many a table.
We know from U. S. Census records that Montavilla had many residents of German and Swedish descent. German American households would likely serve traditional pork and cabbage dishes. Traditional Swedish foods typically included herring and special cookies.
Although the Montavilla newspapers typically reported on Americans of European descent, in Montavilla and neighboring farming communities, like Russellville, there were also many Japanese Americans. This population was big enough in the early 1900s to support the Montavilla Japanese Language School, which helped children learn English and about traditional Japanese culture.
Photo source: Japanese American National Museum
Since 1873, when Japan switched from a lunar calendar to the Western Gregorian calendar, the Japanese and Japanese-Americans have also celebrated New Year’s Day on January 1.
Shogatsu included gift-giving, children’s games, and a variety of foods, many with special meanings. On New Year’s Eve, for example, people would eat long soba noodles, which symbolize longevity and prosperity. A New Year’s Day breakfast would include soup with mochi cakes made of pounded rice.
Conclusion
Although the early 20th Century Montavilla press does not give us an inclusive view of how Montavillans celebrated the New Year, it does indicate some of the diverse ways of bringing in the new year— parties, entertainments, religious services, and feasts.
And, then, there were the Epton brothers, Harold and Festus, who bucked conventions. The Beaver State Herald of January 4, 1907 reported they celebrated by going to Gresham and Pleasant Home… to buy cows.
Illustration of a cow from the Beaver State Herald of January 2, 1913
Sources:
“The Beaver State Herald” is online on Historic Oregon Newspapers .
“The Montavilla Times” is on microfilm in Knight Library at the University of Oregon.
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Historical story ideas? Questions about Montavilla’s past? Also share a love for neighborhood history?
Comment on the article at the link in the heading. Or you can reach out to Pat Sanders at pat.montavilla.history@gmail.com.
Read all of the “Montavilla Memories” articles by Pat Sanders here.
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