A Wish, a Dish & a Fish: New Year’s Rituals of the Pennsylvania Dutch

The placing of the Three Things (Die Drei Dinger) on the windowsill overnight on New Year’s Eve is an old custom meant to bring abundance to the household. Each object represents aspects of household necessities, which it is believed will not run out in the new year.
Photo by Patrick J. Donmoyer

It was just before midnight on New Year’s Eve of 1945. While the Battle of the Bulge still raged in Europe, a young mother in North Heidelberg Township, Berks County, carefully placed a stoneware dish on the outer windowsill of the farmhouse in the stillness of the cold open air. On the dish were the family’s selections for the annual New Year’s ritual of the “Three Things” (Die Drei Dinger): a lump of coal, so that they would never fear the cold of the winter; a silver half dollar, so they would never lack money; and a thimble full of flour, so they would never know hunger in the coming year, despite wartime austerity. This deceptively simple, common household blessing for the new year provided a sense of hope and security to Pennsylvania Dutch families throughout the centuries.

Likely of ancient origin, this custom was one of many brought to Pennsylvania in the 18th century by German-speaking immigrants, whose descendants have flavored the commonwealth’s New Year’s traditions with distinctive foods, symbolic rituals and seasonal blessings that continue to this day. Cultures throughout the world celebrate the arrival of the new year with a wide variety of highly expressive customs, including parades, fireworks, bonfires and bell ringing, as well as more contemplative traditions such as vigils and candle lighting. The Pennsylvania Dutch are no exception in either extreme.

On the louder side of things, the Pennsylvania Dutch are known for “shooting-in” the new year with the discharge of firearms. Equal and opposite is the somber chanting of the old New Year’s wish blessing (Neiyaahrswinsch). Often combined into a single ceremonial expression, bands of local “wishers” went door to door in their neighborhood with a venerated elder offering a chanted New Year’s wish in Pennsylvania Dutch that concluded with the playing of musical instruments or the firing of shotguns.

With traditional fanfare, these customs are often highly ritualized, blending elements of the sacred and agricultural calendar but rooted in popular expression within the domain of the folk. Although often out of sync with official religious observations and only occasionally curbed or criticized by religious and secular authorities, these customs have adapted and changed over time as living traditions, adjusting to new contexts, experiences and cultural expressions with each new generation.

While these traditions persist in some rural communities in Berks and Lehigh counties, the practice of eating pork and sauerkraut on New Year’s Day has become a ubiquitous symbol of Pennsylvania Dutch culture and is well known, not only throughout the region but everywhere that Pennsylvania Dutch families have spread throughout the continent of North America. This tradition has in fact become somewhat of a cultural litmus test for identifying the Pennsylvania Dutch cultural hearth region in southeastern and central Pennsylvania, defined by folklife scholar Don Yoder (1921–2015) as an area of 15,000 square miles, roughly the size of Switzerland, comprising fully one-third of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

The folk art painting Shooting in the New Year by Gladys M. Lutz (1909–2007) depicts a nighttime visit to a local farm by a Neiyaahrswinscher (New Year’s wisher) delivering a lengthy wish, accompanied by shooters ready to fire their rifles into the air at the conclusion of the wish.
Pennsylvania German Cultural Heritage Center, Kutztown University

But whether wishing, shooting or eating, these traditions are unified by the hope that positive outcomes in the new year will be ensured through the proper combination of ritually structured celebration, reverence and abundant generosity. Reflecting on the beliefs of the broader German-speaking cultures of the world, Swiss folklorists Hanns Bächtold-Stäubli (1886–1941) and Eduard Hoffmann-Krayer (1864–1936) suggested that any occurrence on New Year’s signified the character of the rest of the year — “Wie Neujahr so das ganze Jahr” (“As on New Year’s, so the rest of the year”).

This auspicious time and its potential to portend the coming year produced a wide range of divinatory observations and performative practices believed to affect the individual, the family and society. For instance, on a personal level, it was once believed that one’s health, temperament or behavior at New Year’s would characterize the year to come. In a sense, these beliefs have preceded and perhaps given rise to the modern fascination with resolutions, exercise regimes and fad diets.

On a communal level, old European practices of tolling church bells at midnight on New Year’s gave rise to the belief that if one town’s bells lagged behind another’s they would likewise lag behind in the harvest, or if the tolling of the bells was not vehement enough, the year to follow would be lackluster. By this same reasoning, the making of noise on the farm by threshing with flails or firing guns was believed to affect the fertility of the crops and the family.

Yoder described the New Year’s transition for the Pennsylvania Dutch as the proverbial “hinge” upon which the rest of the year rested, a time to not only passively predict the weather and agricultural outcomes but also to actively usher in the promise of a blessed and fortunate year.

Rev. Daniel Schumacher of Weisenberg Township, Lehigh County, made this decorated manuscript New Year’s blessing for Jacob Grimm and family. The blessing contains an original New Year’s wish composed by Schumacher in 1782.
Courtesy of the Philadelphia Free Library, Rare Book Department

The Wish

No expression among the Pennsylvania Dutch better exemplifies the articulation of hope than the New Year’s wish. On December 29, 1884, the Reading newspaper Der Republikaner von Berks described the custom of “Winsching” in the new year: “Almost every night between Christmas and new year, groups of young folk gather at country crossroads to make visitations of nearby households and farms. At each homestead, the leader of the group, the Winscher (wisher), calls out to the master of the house, then begins in a chanting fashion the ancient wish of a blessing to all within said household. These blessings for the coming year are often astonishingly long.”

The performance of the wish was thereby something reserved for a distinguished member of the community with the clarity of memory to recite wishes, often more than 100 lines in length, for each of the neighboring farms in turn — even after the wisher was customarily provided with copious food and drink at each stop.

Although certainly begun as an oral tradition, many variations of New Year’s wishes have been compiled and printed over the centuries. The earliest of these were penned in German Frakturschriften calligraphy by local scriveners and artists. Some local variations of the New Year’s wish were published in books and newspapers or on single sheets of paper as broadsides circulated by local print shops. One of the earliest known printed versions was included in Volkslieder, an 1825 book of folk songs purported to have been printed at Kutztown. Several versions were included in another book of popular songs from Allentown entitled Der Lustiger Sänger (The Merry Songster) in 1839.

It is unknown, however, whether certain local forms of the wish were committed to memory from print or if they were derived from an independent oral tradition that was only occasionally written down. It is likely that both instances contributed to the perpetuation of the tradition.

One such local Berks County wish is Der Langschwammer Neiyaahrswinsch (“The Longswamp New Year’s Wish”), preserved and performed in the latter half of the 20th century by a native Longswamp Township family, which included the musician John Peter Fritsch (1917–98) and later his son Peter V. Fritsch (1945–2015). “The Longswamp New Year’s Wish,” reminiscent of a liturgical canting, is performed in a sing-song plain chant in a blended tongue incorporating both Pennsylvania Dutch and some of the old Pennsylvania High German historically used in church services. The wish was addressed to each and every occupant of the farm, including the whole family and any hired hands, asking for blessing and prosperity on all activities throughout the year.

I wish you and your housewife,
Sons and daughters, hired men and women,
And all those in this house, a happy New Year.
I wish you all good fortune,
And that all misfortune lies far behind you.
The year 2022 is at an end, in the
name of Jesus Christ –
Because 2023 is at hand.

Although the literary style of the wish is distinct, it is both a folk-religious blessing and a prayer, asking not only for a prosperous year but also for perseverance in troubling times. In an introspective tone, the wish observes:

We move along and travel,
From one year to another,
Through many fears and sorrows,
Through uncertain times and tribulations,
Through war and great perils,
That cover the world.

The wish proceeds to offer thanks to the Divine for permission to live a quiet and peaceful life in the midst of adversity. These words are undoubtedly related to an 1830s broadside printed in Reading that includes this exact passage from the Longswamp version of the wish, only this Reading version includes appeals to the Almighty for keeping the house and its occupants safe from fire, floods, sickness and death. These protective benefits of the ritual are aspects valued equally alongside the wish’s inspirational religious significance for the coming year. The final verses of the Longswamp wish introduce the troupe of musicians who play at the conclusion of the blessing:

We stand here before your door, on your land,
Our instruments at the ready.
When we pull out our instruments,
Then you shall hear us serenade.

A New Year’s greeting by celebrated folk artist, musician and preeminent New Year’s wisher of Longswamp Township Peter Fritsch reads “Happy New Year” in Pennsylvania Dutch language.
Courtesy of Michael and Linda Hertzog

Other versions of the wish included a request for permission to fire guns instead of offering a serenade. One such wish, performed by the notable folk singer Willie Brown in Klingerstown and documented in the Mahantango Valley in 1948 by Don Yoder, Walter Boyer and Alfred Buffington, included the following request (in translation):

And now I want to hold watch with you,
And ask you in all respect,
Whether you want us to shoot-in
The New Year at your house.
As strangers we come here,
To begin the New Year with you.
But put away all fears,
If we wake you so early.
I hope it won’t displease you—
You must tell us so before we shoot.
Meanwhile we don’t hear any complaints,
So now you’ll hear my shot!

This “Mahantango New Year’s Wish,” including more than 100 lines of rhyming couplets, was nearly identical to a broadside published sometime in the first decade of the 19th century by Johann Ritter of the Readinger Adler (Reading Eagle) newspaper. Bearing similarities also to the Longswamp wish, these local variants clearly proceeded from a common source.

Two Berks County residents are currently the preeminent Winscher in the Pennsylvania Dutch community. Michael and Linda Hertzog had accompanied the Fritsch family in previous years. In the 1970s Michael, as a young banjo player, originally of Shamrock, Berks County, joined John Peter Fritch to accompany his troupe of musicians from house to house to offer the wish and has continued in the tradition for decades. Linda, who plays upright bass, was asked to join the group by John Peter’s son, Peter Fritsch, who played hammered dulcimer and became the leader of the group as well as chanter of the wish after his father.

Michael and Linda played with Peter for decades in the homes of their friends and neighbors, until the tradition crossed into new territory and became an annual feature at local Berks County churches, including Huff’s Union Church in Albertus, St. Peters United Church of Christ in Molltown, and Longswamp United Church of Christ in Mertztown. Although Peter passed away in 2015, Michael and Linda perform the New Year’s wish at six different churches in Berks and Lehigh counties, where many in the congregations still speak Pennsylvania Dutch. Their efforts are the single most significant force for keeping the old tradition alive in the present day.

Ironically, although the performance of the New Year’s wish has been embraced by local churches, some ministers in the past discouraged the wish as a secular activity, despite the obviousness of its sacred character. Ministers instead preferred to pen lengthy poems with lofty religious imagery that were delivered in church on New Year’s Day or after the stroke of midnight following the solemn nightwatch vigils on New Year’s Eve, when congregations gathered to pray for the souls of those who passed away in the old year and for guidance in the new year.

Pork and sauerkraut, a classic New Year’s dish served at the traditional time of winter butchering, has become a culinary signifier of Pennsylvania Dutch cultural influence.
Photo by William Woys Weaver

The Dish

Rev. Henry Melchior Muhlenberg (1711–86), distinguished missionary to Pennsylvania and founder of the Lutheran denomination in North America, described in detail in his journal entries from January 1, 1762, that he held vigil on New Year’s Eve and edited the lines of his lengthy New Year’s verses he planned to deliver from the pulpit the following day, instead of partaking in the loud secular festivities with which he was much “annoyed.”

Each year on New Year’s Day, Muhlenberg drew a verse at random from the celebrated devotional card collection Golden Treasury for the Children of God (Güldenes Schatzkästlein für die Kinder Gottes) by Silesian pietist hymnist Karl Heinrich von Bogatzky, and the selected verse served as a contemplative touchstone for beginning Muhlenberg’s year. The same practice was also associated with Germantown printer Christopher Saur (1695–1758), who produced cards in 1744 of Gerhard Tersteegen’s Lottery of Pious Folk (Der Frommen Lotterie), which served as an interactive devotional tool for receiving religious insights at random for contemplation on auspicious occasions.

On New Year’s Day, 1781, Muhlenberg’s diary indicated that he received a gift of “a pudding broth” from a friend, which he much preferred to the performance of “wearisome new year’s wishes.” This broth, locally known as Metzelsupp (butcher soup) in Pennsylvania Dutch language, was the traditional gift given to friends and neighbors following the customary butchering of hogs on New Year’s Day. It was the tradition at this time for families and neighbors to gather for the collective task of butchering significant quantities of pork on one of the coldest days of the year and one of the rare occasions when fresh pork was roasted and served on the farm along with sauerkraut—a traditional dish consumed throughout the region as a customary New Year’s dinner.

In centuries past, prior to the advent of refrigeration, this festive preparation of fresh pork was only possible during the coldest days of winter butchering, yet today a symbolic interpretation has been asserted for the consumption of pork on New Year’s Day. As a metaphor for the inevitable progression of the year, it is observed that the pig roots forward with the snout when feeding, while the other staple animal in Pennsylvania Dutch culinary tradition, the chicken, scratches backward. As with the old perception that events of the first day of the year portend the events to follow, this observation suggests that one must be forward-oriented to start the year, rather than preoccupied with the past.

Butchering on New Year’s Day was a common custom, bringing together friends and family of all ages to join in the work of processing the meat to make traditional favorites like sausage and scrapple. This butchering scene was photographed by H. Winslow Fegley (1870–1944).
Schwenkfelder Library and Heritage Center, Pennsburg

The serving of pork is also an old Yuletide tradition, reflected in the popular medieval Boar’s Head Carol of the British Isles, which German folklorist Jacob Grimm suggested was a remnant of an old pagan sacrificial rite. Pennsylvania Dutch foodways ethnographer William Woys Weaver suggests that the annual custom of eating pork at the new year is also an echo of an early Celtic myth in which a black sow swallows the sun at the winter solstice, and order must be restored by feasting on the pig. Although unaware of any ancient origins of this tradition, the Pennsylvania Dutch associate the eating of pork and sauerkraut with good luck for the coming year.

A wide variety of pork dishes were also traditionally prepared for preservation at the time of the New Year’s butchering, and it was once an intergenerational family affair, with tasks for every age group and skill level. Men and women parted out specific cuts of meat for preservation by smoking, salting and pickling, as well as for chopping and grinding for sausages and scrapple. Children assisted with cleaning the intestines, which would later serve as casings for a diverse array of sausages.

Pretzels were once a traditional favorite as tokens of appreciation at New Year’s celebrations. Bakers produced them with intricate adornment for showroom displays and centerpieces for New Year’s table spreads.
Photo by William Woys Weaver

Even the stomach was cleaned and prepared for the penultimate seasonal meal — Seimaage, or Hogmaw in some parts, consisting of a stomach casing carefully stuffed with meat, potatoes, onions, parsley and other spices and sewn shut, boiled until firm, and then roasted in the oven until golden brown. Traditionally, this dish was firm like a meatloaf and could be carefully sliced and served, as it is in part of the Rhine River Valley where the dish originates. Nevertheless, in some parts of Pennsylvania, a looser variety is prepared, in which the ingredients do not set and are eaten more like a stew cooked in the stomach casing.

Throughout the butchering process, kettles were kept simmering on cauldron stoves, and the resulting broth was the Metzelsupp. A customary gift for friends and neighbors on New Year’s Day would consist of some of this broth along with samples of sausage and other delectables. Over time, the concept of the Metzelsupp changed from being centered on the broth to being any sampling of meat distributed as a gift after butchering.

It was also customary during these New Year’s visits to present family and friends with tokens of appreciation in the form of homemade pretzels, cookies and pastries; hard apple cider or wine; and even fish caught for the occasion. A well-remembered and humorous variation of the New Year’s wish describes an exaggerated abundance of the customary food and drink given to wishers and exchanged as gifts for New Year’s (in translation):

We wish you a blessed New Year –
A pretzel as big as a barn door,
A sausage as big as a stovepipe,
Along with a large cornered table,
With a fried fish on each end,
And in the middle a bottle of wine,
This shall be our New Year’s Wish.

The Fish and Other Symbols

For traditional festive baked goods, many of these were imbued with symbolic significance beyond mere delectation. Neijaahrsbuwe (New Year’s Boys) were one such pastry, formed in the shape of little humans and marked with three crosses, echoing the triune form of the pretzel, considered a blessing from the Three Kings or the biblical Three Wise Men — Caspar, Melchior and Balthasar (or “Grosper, Melcher, un Baldas” as one Berks County source suggests) — whose feast day of Epiphany is celebrated on January 6.

In old Europe this day is commemorated with the marking of windows and doorways with the initials of the Three Kings, articulated with three crosses and a star, and is commonly observed throughout Germany as an extension of old liturgical traditions in which the priest presiding over mass blessed chalk and then distributed it to the congregants for marking their doors. This practice continued on a folk-cultural level in Pennsylvania but faded on account of it appearing too Catholic for the predominantly Protestant, Anabaptist and Pietist denominational affiliations of the Pennsylvania Dutch. German Catholics, though a significant minority, were less than one percent of the immigrant population that settled southeastern Pennsylvania.

Interestingly enough, this veneration of the Three Kings was later revived by a large-format broadside printed in Kutztown around 1880 by Kutztown job printers Alfred B. Urick (1853–1937) and Swiss immigrant Conrad Gehring (1851–1927), four-time elected chief burgess of Kutztown Borough. It prominently displayed the title “Ein sehr kräftiges heiliges Gebet” (“A Very Powerful, Holy Prayer”), along with three crosses set within elaborate typographical borders and the classic C+M+B+ initials. It featured an old protective prayer, formerly used by Roman Catholics and Protestants alike, for protection from plague, fire, storms and the predations of the wicked. The Kutztown version of the prayer was hung in homes throughout the region and was recited aloud on the Feast of Epiphany, also called by locals Alt Grischtdaag (Old Christmas) — a dwindling echo of the transition from the old Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar hotly debated in colonial Pennsylvania more than a century prior in 1752.

Since the 12th century, England had observed March 25 as the official start of the new year, as it aligned with the liturgical Feast of the Annunciation, celebrating the biblical story of the Archangel Gabriel’s announcement to the Virgin Mary that she would give birth to Jesus. But due to the imprecision of the Julian calendar system’s accommodations for leap year, it was also ahead by 11 days from the Gregorian calendar, used in other parts of Europe since 1691 under directive from Pope Innocent XII. By an act of the English parliament, January 1 was established as the official start of the year, and 11 days were dropped from September of 1752 for both England and her colonies. Although seemingly insignificant today, it was seen as a major disruption to not only the official English authorities who instated the change but also among common folk whose religious and agricultural practices hinged upon observation of auspicious and holy days in the liturgical calendar. As a result, farmers almanacs were printed with information from both calendars in the years preceding and following the transition, and even some early Pennsylvania gravestones provide dates in both calendar systems. There were also other traditions surrounding the symbolism of the year that lost their significance with this change. One such example that has been puzzling to historians is the prevalence of the “New Year’s fish.”

An early 19th-century redware pottery mold made in Berks County was carefully formed to produce a shallow, circular, fish-shaped cake or gelatin to celebrate the new year. This tradition was once common in the Rhine River Valley in the German Palatinate, as well as Alsace, France, where the moule à poisson pour gâteaux de nouvel-an (fish mold for New Year’s cake) is still widely used.
Pennsylvania German Cultural Heritage Center, Kutztown University

It was once customary to distribute gifts of fish-shaped cakes, cookies and gelatin to celebrate the New Year, and redware molds still survive from potters in western Berks County from the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Many of these feature a hollow image of a fish, curved like a bow, or in some cases biting its own tail in a circular arrangement, much like similar molds produced along the Rhine River Valley separating the present-day German Palatinate from Alsace, France, where the molds for making Gâteau de poisson du Nouvel An (New Year’s Fish Cake) are still prevalent today.

Although the fish would have no logical significance today as a symbol of the new year in the Western world, the ancient Roman calendar provides the clues to this riddle. In the Roman calendar, the new year was celebrated on March 1, and half-lapping the months, the signs of the solar zodiac designate the constellation Pisces the fish to rule February 18 through March 20. Even after Julius Caesar controversially proclaimed January 1 as the start of the new year in 45 B.C., the fish remained the symbol of the change of the year, with its tail and head representing the old and new. This symbolism would later be reinforced again in the Middle Ages when the new year was reassigned to March 25, five days after the vernal equinox when the sun transits the constellation of Pisces. Hence, the Pennsylvania New Year’s fish, biting its tail like the Greek serpent ouroboros, was a befitting symbol of the yearly cycle.

Although the arcane New Year’s fish has been all but entirely forgotten, this awareness of cyclicity and the progression of the annual cycle of life and its culturally distinctive customs continue in many small ways throughout the commonwealth. Some rural families still customarily walk the property and garden on New Year’s Day, wishing the necessary “Happy New Year” to each of the fruit trees and annuals slumbering in the soil, believing that such a midwinter greeting will prepare the earth for the coming spring renewal.

But whether in giving gifts, offering wishes, selecting the “Three Things,” or eating pork and sauerkraut, Pennsylvania’s New Year’s traditions are marked with a distinctive sense of optimism, expressing the abiding hope and promise that each coming year has the potential to be imbued with meaning, and that abundance is best experienced by sharing with others.

Further Reading

Boyer, Walter E., Albert Buffington, and Don Yoder. Songs Along the Mahantongo: Pennsylvania Dutch Folksongs. Lancaster: Pennsylvania Dutch Folklore Center, 1951. / Donmoyer, Patrick J. Powwowing in Pennsylvania: Braucherei and the Ritual of Everyday Life. Kutztown: Pennsylvania German Cultural Heritage Center, 2018. / Weaver, William Woys. As American as Shoofly Pie: The Foodlore and Fakelore of Pennsylvania Dutch Cuisine. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013. / Yoder, Don. “Sauerkraut in the Pennsylvania Folk-Culture.” Pennsylvania Folklife 12, no. 2 (Summer 1961): 56–69. / —. Discovering American Folklife: Essays on Folk Culture and the Pennsylvania Dutch. 25th anniversary ed. Kutztown: Pennsylvania German Cultural Heritage Center, 2015. / —. The Pennsylvania German Broadside: A History and Guide. University Park: Penn State University Press, 2005.

Patrick J. Donmoyer is the director of the Pennsylvania German Cultural Heritage Center at Kutztown University. He is the author of several books, including Powwowing in Pennsylvania: Braucherei and the Ritual of Everyday Life and Hex Signs: Myth and Meaning in Pennsylvania Dutch Barn Stars. His most recent articles for Pennsylvania Heritage are “Searching for Mountain Mary: The Life and Legend of an Early Pennsylvania Saint” (Winter 2022) and “More Than Decoration: Barn Stars Sustain the Spirit of Folk Tradition” (Spring 2021).