Did our New Year grease pole tradition come from New York?
When the National New Year is celebrated in our villages over the weekend and continues next week, one of the highlights will be the traditional games, including “climbing the grease pole”.
Did we follow in the footsteps of New Yorkers, going back to 1783 when British colonial troops finally left the island of Manhattan in New York City, two months after the end of the American Revolution?
That morning, according to the New York Times, George Washington and his troops marched triumphantly south from Harlem to reclaim the Battery, located at the far southern end of New York City, where they would replace the impeccably dressed redcoats with their own ragtag crew of citizen-soldiers.
When they finally reached Fort George, at the tip of Manhattan, they discovered the British had committed one last act of defiance: they had nailed the Union Jack atop the flagpole, which they had afterward stripped and greased, preventing an easy removal.
Sure, the Americans could have cut the greasy pole down — but then, where would they fly their own flag?
An enterprising sailor named John Jacob van Arsdale had a solution. After failing three times to climb the greasy pole the traditional way, he and a couple of his friends ran to a hardware store to get supplies. With his pockets filled with nails and the rope for a new halyard over his shoulder, he made his way slowly up the greasy pole, hammering in footholds as he ascended, the Times said. According to legend, the American Star-Spangled Banner was aloft before the British were out of sight, meaning they had seen the failure of their ploy — and the end of their presence in America.
And every ye a r, on Evacuation Day, New Yorkers recreated their act of defiance against the British by climbing a grease pole.
Later on, climbing the ‘greasy pole’ became a synonym associated in politics with having to climb the ‘greasy pole of politics’ to the top.
And thereby hangs a tale.