In certain parts of England, yesterday was Plough Monday: the remains of an ancient festival that once marked the start of the agricultural year, writes Frank McNally.
Not that much ploughing was ever done, even at the height of the event's observance. Instead, rural communities celebrated the first Monday after the Twelve Days of Christmas - and the nominal return to work - by carousing all day.
The focal point of the festivities was a plough, decorated with ribbons and pulled from door to door by revellers who sought money, a bit like trick-or-treaters at Halloween. As at Halloween, there was an implied threat, which is where the plough came in. If any man refused payment, the revellers would dig up his lawn - or lacking a lawn, the area in front of his house.
Today, we can only admire the stamina of people who chose the first working Monday after Christmas to have a party. The festival is now little celebrated, if at all. In modern England, the start of the year's first full working week is instead marked in a rather more sober way, although a link with husbandry, however tenuous, remains.
Yes, the first Monday after Yuletide is now the busiest day of the year for divorce lawyers. It is even known in the profession as D-Day. The lawyers don't go from door to door with decorated copies of family-law books, collecting money. But they don't have to, stretched as they are dealing with unsolicited calls from customers who have been cooped up with estranged partners - or their partners' relatives - for the past two weeks and have decided enough is enough.
Fans of Neil Young may recall his use of tillage as a metaphor for a failed relationship in the song Field of Opportunity. An incongruously cheerful number from his country music phase, it looks forward to better fortunes in love with the chorus: "In the field of opportunity, it's ploughing time again." But Neil Young notwithstanding, the collision of old-year marriage problems with new-year resolutions is felt most strongly by women who, in Britain at least, account for three-quarters of the Plough Monday divorce initiators.
Half of them cite a husband's Christmas party misdemeanour as the breaking point. So perhaps the ancient festival is unwittingly re-enacted in some households, as lawns are ploughed up with sports cars, or golf clubs, or other prized possessions of errant spouses. At any rate, the big beneficiaries are the divorce lawyers, some of whom may have raised a glass last night, in advance celebration of the harvest.
I'll tell you the women I feel sorry for at this time of year: those mothers who give birth in the final moments of December 31st. We never hear their stories in the media. But amid the rush to acclaim babies born the other side of midnight, how must these women feel at missing out so narrowly on glory? Is this yet another contributor to relationship strain at Christmas? Not in the after-glow of a child's birth, presumably, but years later, when the joy has worn off and petty causes for recrimination are eagerly seized upon. Do fathers berate mothers for their lack of will-power on that New Year's Eve past, when they couldn't hang on another few minutes? Do mothers blame fathers for insufficient support in the delivery ward, or for mistiming their "breathe-in"/"breathe-out" directions? And what about those new-born children who, like 07-registered cars, found themselves instantly devalued at the stroke of midnight last week? It is a well-known rule of economics that having a birthday close to Christmas has a deflationary effect on the spending patterns of potential present buyers. But whatever chance an early-January child has of separate gifts, the late-December child has even less.
When Sir Alex Ferguson complained about the lack of noise from the home supporters at Manchester United's New Year's Day game, maybe that's all that was bothering him. Or maybe it was the cry of a man who had celebrated his 67th birthday the day before - as indeed he had - and who nurses a life-long grievance at the inadequate celebrations. (That would also explain his constant criticism of referees, no matter how many presents they give him at Old Trafford.) I'm not blaming the media for hyping New Year births, by the way. The papers have to be filled, even on quiet days. I've spent a fair few January 1sts in the newsroom myself, and God knows - to reprise the tillage theme a moment - it can be a harrowing experience.
That's why I was delighted to see that this year, my colleagues received the unexpected bonus of a GAA angle to the first-baby story, when teams from Cork and Kerry vied for the title. In a re-run of the All-Ireland final - except that this one was close - the rival infants were both timed at exactly one second past midnight. But the Kingdom baby got the nod from the judges, because it was born by the traditional method, whereas the Cork birth was by Caesarean section.
My best wishes go to both families, of course. And I know it had nothing to do with football, really. But at the risk of sounding like a bitter Northerner, I find it vaguely objectionable that even in the area of obstetrics, Kerry should be credited with a monopoly on purism. It's a small mercy that the c-section baby was from Cork, at least, and not from one the Ulster counties. Otherwise, Pat Spillane would surely have come out by now and accused the Northern team of ruining childbirth.