There's always the New Year's kiss, the excessive imbibing of bubbly, and the usual resolutions that you probably won't fulfill. But this Dec. 31 why not try a new tradition?
Here are a few more global good luck traditions that Goalsguy.com compiled.
BRAZIL: In Brazil the lentil is believed to signify wealth, so on the first day of the New Year they serve lentil soup or lentils and rice. In Brazil on New Year's Eve priestesses of the local macumba voodoo cult dress in blue skirts and white blouses for a ceremony dedicated to the goddess of water, Yemanja.
DENMARK: In Denmark it is a good sign to find your door heaped with a pile of broken dishes at New Years. Old dishes are saved year around to throw them at the homes where their friends live on New Years Eve. Many broken dishes were a symbol that you have many friends. New Year's Eve is framed by two important items broadcast on television and radio, respectively the monarch's New Year Speech at 6 p.m. and the striking of midnight by the Town Hall Clock in Copenhagen, which marks the start of the New Year.
ENGLAND: The British place their fortunes for the coming year in the hands of their first guest. They believe the first visitor of each year should be male and bearing gifts. Traditional gifts are coal for the fire, a loaf for the table and a drink for the master.
For good luck, the guest should enter through the front door and leave through the back. Guests who are empty-handed or unwanted are not allowed to enter first.
Goalsguy is a Web site for New Year's Resolution week, as inspired by Gary Ryan Blair. According to the site, the annual event was founded on the premise that a single resolution can positively and profoundly create lasting change in your life and make the world a better place.
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Or better yet, make one up. Of course, your new traditions can be as elaborate as you want them to be.
Hungry? A friend of mine adopted the Southern tradition of eating black eyed peas with pork jowls with collard greens.
From what I understand you will receive a day of good luck for each pea eaten. Collard greens symbolize folding money and pork or hog jowls represent prosperity.
In Italy, they eat lentils with spicy sausage and pork, yummy.
A Cuban coworker's parents dump a bucket of water in the yard to symbolize out with the old in with the new.
As a child my mom, who is from Colombia, watched family members crack eggs and drop the contents into a cup of water. The shape of the yolk would indicate what lay ahead.
Want to predict the future, but you don't have an egg? The Germans drop some molten lead in cold water to see how successful the next year will be.
Or you could take after the Argentineans and go swimming at the stroke of midnight.
If you can't afford to see the ball drop in Times Square, most of these international customs seem pretty easy to adopt, and I'm sure the countrymen/women won't mind.
Take this custom (literally, you can have it), for example:
For as long as I can remember, my mom and I would head to the grocery store in Miami just before New Year's Eve and purchase the prettiest grapes we could find. Purple or green, it didn't matter.
About 20 minutes before midnight she would dole out 12 seedless grapes to each person participating in the celebration.
We'd count down the seconds as the adults sipped champagne. At the stroke of midnight we'd all kiss and hug and gobble up our grapes.
She would always come check on me and say, "Did you eat all your grapes? Did you make your wishes?"
Each grape, or uva, symbolizes a month and an opportunity for a wish for the coming year.
Other countries, such as Spain and Venezuela, practice this too. In Peru, for example, they eat a 13th grape to assure good luck.
If you're not feeling fruity or hungry, there are more fun Colombian traditions to try.
You can wear yellow underwear for good luck, which some argue, must be given to you by someone else.
By the way, before you give your sweetie his or her first smooch of 2009, try saying Happy New Year in another language:
Hawaiin- Hauoli Makahiki hou
Hebrew- Shana Tova
Thai- Sawatdee Pi Mai
French- Bonne année
Spanish- Feliz año nuevo |
Or you can grab a suitcase and walk around the block. "You don't put anything in the suitcase," my mom said. "You just go around the block with the suitcase if you want to travel that year."
Mami said people in Bogota, the capital city, did it all the time. Must have been strange sight seeing the neighbors rolling suitcase down the street--and yet, I plan on being one of those weirdoes in New Smyrna Beach. (I hope to go to Italy by August.)
In my father's opinion, only the rich people in Argentina could afford to go swimming. His tradition in Buenos Aires was simply: "party, party, party, and the next day at 6 a.m., breakfast."
"Nadie se acostaba," he said. (No one went to sleep). And although it seems to be a Colombian tradition, he too, admitted to wearing yellow underwear once for good luck. (I have no idea where a man would find yellow underwear, nor do I want to think of it further.)
This year, though, he'll also be rolling the suitcase through his barrio for the first time. If this works, we'll both be heading to Europe for the first time in 2009. Will we see you in Italy?