New Year's Eve

I was thinking about throwing a good New Year's Eve party, and I stumbled across this book called A Dictionary of Superstitions. Naturally, I looked up New Year's, not wanting to accidentally do something to upset Olmec, or Kirk Fogg for that matter. Anyway, here's what I found:

On the evening before New Year's Day, it is usual for the cowherd and the young people to meet together, and one of them is covered with a cow's hide. The rest of the company are provided with staves, to the end of which bits of raw hide are tied. The person covered with the hide runs thrice round the dwelling-house, according to the course of the sun; the rest pursue, beating the hide with their staves, and crying "Let us raise the noise louder and louder; let us beat the hide."

That sounds like tons of fun, so I'm definitely going to do something like that at my party. I just have to find some cow hide. And someone who'll be willing to run around my house getting beaten.