Starting a New Year brings hope for better times, thus people around the world practice little rituals to ensure good fortune will wait for them and those awful moments will stay in the past. While each culture’s New Year celebration has its own flavor, they have in common the intention of setting things straight like a thorough housecleaning, paying off debts, returning borrowed objects, mending quarrels and preparing themselves for prosperity.
Maybe you are not superstitious, but let’s take a look to a few traditions that can add a little fun to your New Years Eve.
In some towns in Italy, people shove their old sofas, chairs and even refrigerators out of their windows on New Year’s Eve (you can just donate them or put them on your curbside)
While according to British folklore, you should not sweep on New Year’s Day, or you will sweep your good luck away, or take anything out of the house, even trash. If you must carry something out, be sure to bring something else in first, preferably a coin concealed outside the previous night.
In Ecuador, people make dummies, stuffed with straw, to represent the events of the past year. These “año viejo” effigies are burned at midnight, thus symbolically getting rid of the past.
In Rio de Janeiro, more than a million people gather on the beaches on December 31st to honor Yemanja, the Yoruban “Mother of the Sea,” who brings good fortune.
The color of underwear is very important for your new year’s wishes: Pink or red brings love; yellow, prosperity; and white, peace and happiness.
The American custom of spending the night with the one you love and kissing them at midnight insures that the relationship will flourish during the coming year.
The pig is the symbol of good luck in Vienna, Austria. Pigs are let loose in restaurants and everyone tries to touch them for luck as they run by. In private homes, a marzipan pig, with a gold piece in its mouth, is suspended from a ribbon and touched instead.
In Greece, it’s customary to throw a pomegranate wrapped in silver foil on the threshold, to spread the seeds of good luck for an abundant year.
In the American South, it’s traditional to eat cornbread, cabbage, and black-eyed peas on New Year’s Day. The peas symbolize coins or copper money, the cornbread gold, and the cabbage green or folding money.
A Japanese New Year’s custom is the money tree: pine and cypress branches placed in a vase, and decorated with old coins and paper pomegranates and flowers. Old coins (with holes in them) are strung on colored threads in the shape of dragon and put at the foot of children’s beds. This is called “cash to pass the year.” It is supposed to be saved and not spent. However, money is given as a gift, usually in red envelopes.
In Spanish-speaking countries, people put twelve grapes into their wine or champagne glass at midnight. The grapes represent the months of the old year and the new one. At the stroke of midnight, after toasting each other with the wine, people eat the grapes as quickly as possible, making a wish on each one.
Eating lentils during the dinner or holding money in your hand at midnight brings abundance.
Love to travel? Take you suitcase for a little ride around the block right after midnight. Yes, you have time for your toast, grapes, money, eating, salutations, and then you go with it.
Even though we live in Miami, we can still maintain our traditions to keep us connected to where we come from. So share it with friends and family and have a safe time.
Happy New Year from it’s IN miami!
