Holidays & Happy-Days by Hamish Hendry

Little children are usually snug in bed when the first holiday of the year arrives. It comes at midnight when all is dark out of doors. Sometimes the weather is very cold, here in England, with snow upon the ground; and as it nears midnight on the 31st December there is a great silence beneath the stars. The children are in bed; but in most homes there are grown-up people – fathers, mothers, uncles or aunts – who sit late and watch the clock. They watch; and when the clock strikes twelve they know that the first day of the New Year has arrived.