Baby New Year and Father Time

Baby New Year and Father Time are characters that often symbolize the passage of one year to the next. Father Time represents the aging year, while Baby New Year serves as the personification of the birth of a new calendar cycle. They are often visually represented in newspaper cartoons and calendars, and featured as main characters in the 1976 Rankin/Bass TV special Rudolph's Shiny New Year.

References

• Ernie, clad in a safety-pin-fastened diaper and wearing a sash announcing the new date, plays the role of Baby New Year at the beginning of January in The Sesame Street Calendar 1972. At the end of the month, Bert appears as Father Time from 1971, dusting away the alphabet with a broom.

• Bert and Ernie again take on the roles for The Sesame Street 1974 Activity Calendar, with Bert's Father Time walking toward the horizon holding a scythe labelled 1973, as Ernie's Baby New Year celebrates with a ruler to measure the passage of time, a number 1 for the first of the year, and wearing nothing but a diaper and a red 1974 sash.

• Robin the Frog and Sweetums play Baby New Year and Father Time, respectively, in the Muppet Diary 1980.

• Statler is cast as Father Time for the New Year's show in the January 1, 1984 edition of The Muppets comic strip. After Scooter explains that the show's theme is "Everything Old Is New Again," infant versions of the Muppets appear in the final panel, representing Baby New Year.

• Caroll Spinney depicted Slimey as the year 2000 for a sweater presented to the cast and crew of Sesame Street in commemoration of the show's 31st season. The worm's Baby New Year attire consists of a top hat and diaper with a safety pin attached to a tail marking the new millennium.