how do slaves feel about celebrating New Year ?

The slaves celebrate the New Year with misgivings, fear, and sadness. The New Year marks the day that slaves are "hired" out; the second day of the year marks their separation from family.

"But to the slave mother New Year's day comes laden with peculiar sorrows. She sits on her cold cabin floor, watching the children who may all be torn from her the next morning; and often does she wish that she and they might die before the day dawns. She may be an ignorant creature, degraded by the system that has brutalized her from childhood; but she has a mother's instincts, and is capable of feeling a mother's agonies."