An ambitious multi-year attempt to put Dublin on the international New Year's Eve map begins with a fledgling festival today, while a small and venerable festival continues its centuries-old traditions in Kerry, writes BRIAN O'CONNELL
IF ORGANISERS OF a new festival have their way, in the next five years Dublin will match Edinburgh when it comes to celebrating New Year’s Eve. This year marks the inaugural Dublin New Year Festival, with hopes that up to 32,000 people will attend a range of events both indoors and outdoors over the coming weekend. The five-year plan is to double the size of the event year on year, culminating in a large-scale public spectacle in 2016 to rival celebrations in any other capital city across the globe.
Dublin New Year Festival organiser Barry O’Sullivan argues that the problem for many Irish revellers is that there is not one large-scale obvious choice for a communal New Year celebration in the city. This year he is hoping to change all that.
“I’ve worked in hospitality in Dublin for the past 10 years and it always struck me that we didn’t have the type of events during New Year to attract international and domestic visitors,” he says. “Everyone is familiar with looking at news stations on the stroke of midnight and seeing all these magnificent cities like London, Paris and Sydney celebrating the New Year. To my mind, Dublin never did anything to be up there with them.”
Part of the problem of course with large outdoor public spectacles as witnessed in other international cities is funding. A fireworks demonstration alone can cost close to half a million euro, and at a time when sponsorship and funding is tight, any new festival will struggle to compete with other long-established events. The plan then for the festival is to start small and gradually build up to an event of international stature.
“I think Edinburgh is a good benchmark for what Dublin can do,” says O’Sullivan. “They started in 1995 with a five-year plan for their festival. It started from scratch in the run up to the Millennium celebrations and has been sustained into a huge piece of tourist revenue for the city. It now brings £30 million sterling into the local economy that benefits everyone from hotels to taxi drivers and coffee-shop owners. We started this year on a small scale. It has been a challenging year for raising funds so we’re delighted to be off the ground and running.”
The festival runs from Thursday, December 30th until January 1st, and incorporates a range of indoor and outdoor events, from comedy shows and live music to family events, including Solas, a free lighting display at Dublin Castle. While initially modest in scale, it has received the backing of Fáilte Ireland and several Dublin organisations as well as headline sponsors Diageo, and the hope is that these sponsors will match the ambitions of the festival organisers in the years ahead.
From one of Ireland’s newest New Year festivals then to one of the country’s oldest – in Portmagee in Co Kerry, preparations are under way to ensure a centuries-old celebration is brought to fruition again this year.
The “Old Year” festival has its roots in the early 18th century, when a ship landed in the port from France three days after Christmas, and stayed until the new year. On New Year’s Eve, locals witnessed the crew of the French boat holding torches and marching through the village, led by a piper. An elderly crew member staggered through the centre of the procession, and after walking a distance, the crew pretended to shoot him and he lay down dead. He was replaced by a newly dressed younger looking man who went on to give a speech to locals about the passing of the old with the new.
Locals in Portmagee have sought to keep the custom alive by re-enacting this scene every year since then. It’s now become very much a part of local tradition, as hotelier Gerald Kennedy explains.
“The spectacle includes us going through the village with 12 torches with turf and fire and a pipe and a drummer. They march someone representing the ‘old year’ through the village. Eventually a shot rings out and the old year is gone. The person representing the New Year bursts out through the door of a house and shakes hands with every resident. He or she gives a speech and maybe touches on some things that have happened in the village the year previously. It is a big night in the town.”
The Old Year festival is proof, then, that sometimes tradition trumps spectacle when it comes to New Year’s Eve celebrations. As for plans to turn the age-old custom in Portmagee into an international tourist event to rival Edinburgh’s Hogmanay, Kennedy is not so sure.
“You’d have a few Germans and Americans around probably wondering what the hell is going on. We never pushed it really in terms of publicity. It’s a local thing.”
For information on Dublin’s inaugural New Year Festival, see dublinnewyearfestival.com.
For more on Portmagee and the Old Year Festival, see moorings.ie/portmagee.aspx
