New Year’s Traditions Around the World

The rapid approach of a new year gives birth to a broad range of reactions, everything from relief to a sense of renewal, We have a chance to assess 2023 and plot out a path to make the next year better. While Christmas is family and food oriented, the New Year is celebrated on the end of the old year while the actual first day of the new year seems to focus on recuperating from the eve celebration, parades and football games.

So how will other countries ring in 2024? The focus seems to be on cultural assessments of good luck, prosperity and food. The following is a quick run-down of traditions around the globe.

On New Year’s Eve in Spain, grapes are consumed at each strike of the 12 strikes of the clock. The grapes represent each month of the year, assuring good luck and prosperity in each. Those who can’t manage to down the 12 by the time the clock strikes stop are doomed to 12 months of bad luck.

Scotland takes a different slant on good luck, even the name, Hogmanay. Tradition puts the onus on the first person who enters a house after midnight. For good luck, that person has to be male and bring whiskey, coal or salt.

The tradition in Finland focuses on casting molten tin into a water container and then trying to discern the shape the tin forms as it cools. If the tin forms a ring or heart, a wedding is in the future. If the tin somehow looks like a pig, the focus shifts to food. Germans have a similar tradition, called BleigieBen. In the Czech Republic, the New Year predictor of the future is the shape of the core of an apple sliced in half.

In Denmark, plates are the losers. Danes not only break plates for good luck, they throw plates against the doors of friends and family to repel bad spirits. Tradition doesn’t stop there. Danes also jump off chairs at the stroke of midnight to symbolize jumping enthusiastically into a new year.

Estonians have a unique approach to garnering good luck for the coming year, based on the number of meals eaten on New Year’s Eve. The optimum number for good luck is nine to 12.

Armenians eat bread they believe luck has been kneaded into. In Ireland, single people sleep with mistletoe under their pillows as a way to find a significant other. Romanians talk to animals. Austrians eat pigs and exchange chocolate pigs with friends and family. Greek traditions are also food oriented. Greeks smash fruit on their friends’ and neighbors’ front doors. The seeds are counted; the more seeds the more good luck.

The focus on food for good luck isn’t reserved for European countries. In the Philippines, the focus is on eating 12 round shaped fruits at midnight and wearing polka-dotted attire.

And finally, a more recent tradition for Johannesburg, South Africa involves throwing furniture and appliances out the window, even from high rises. Apparently, the motivation is to make room for new furniture and appliances.

Given all of the above, simply making resolutions seems very sensible.