Millions of people around the world will soon be welcoming the dawning of the New Year 2018.
Although parties and large gatherings with fireworks, kisses and lots of Champagne are standard in America and Europe, other cultures around the world celebrate in different ways.
In some, food is used to celebrate the New Year because eating the right things is believed to influence what happens in the coming New Year.
For example, in Greece, it is customary on New Year’s Eve to smash a pomegranate on the floor before the home’s entrance. When the pomegranate splits, the seeds are revealed. Their vivid red color represents the human heart and life and fertility; the seeds’ medicinal properties represent good health; and the abundance of round seeds – prosperity.
Keeping fish is considered lucky in some parts of Asia and are symbols of good fortune and wealth, especially if it’s Fenshui fish. Eating whole fish at New Year brings good health, prosperity and happiness because fish swim forward and never backwards. Conversely, it’s considered bad luck to eat crab or lobster because they move sideways. Fish also have scales which are symbols for coins — a harbinger of riches in the year to come. This may be why the Danes, Swedes and Norwegians think it is lucky to eat boiled cod on New Year’s Day.
Also considered lucky food at New Year are dishes made from lentils. These legumes are round and symbolize coins and therefore prosperity. In Italy, lentils are served on New Year’s Eve just after midnight, often with roast pork or sausage. In Brazil, the first meal of the year is also likely to be lentils, served with rice or in lentil soup. This tradition may date back to the ancient Rome, when lentils were used as currency and exchanged on the first day of the year.
In Spain and a few other Spanish-speaking countries, the tradition of eating 12 lucky grapes, or las doces uvas de la suerte, or the Twelve Grapes of Fortune, is at least a century old. Eating one grape at each strike of the clock at midnight on New Year’s Eve can improve your luck all year long. Each grape is a wish for happiness and luck for every month in the coming year.
And, in Germany, sauerkraut is meant to bring prosperity — the more strands in a bowl, the more riches you will enjoy.
In Japan, the traditional food is toshi koshi soba. Long strands of soba noodles in Japan symbolize long life and it’s considered lucky to eat the noodles without them breaking. The noodles are eaten, often at Buddhist temples while the temple bells are ringing on the eve of the New Year.
In other cultures and countries, New Year is celebrated with some thought-provoking New Year’s traditions. From breaking plates in Denmark to burning scarecrows in Ecuador, some traditions are only a few centuries while others date back to ancient times.
The smashing plates in Denmark is a sign of friendship. The Danes save old dishes to break them on each others’ front doors on New Year’s eve. The more broken dishes piled up against the door, the more friends you have.
Italians like to throw their old possessions out of windows after midnight on New Year’s eve celebrating ‘out with the old and in with the new.’
The Japanese like to clean their entire house and then decorate throughout with pine branches, plum blossoms and bamboo. These items play a special role in bringing prosperity in the upcoming year.
In China, to symbolize happiness and good luck in the New Year, the Chinese like to paint their front doors red. This New Year falls in February and will be the Year of the Dog. The main traditions include eating reunion dinner with family, giving red envelopes full of money to children, fireworks, new clothes, and decorations.
And, just like the Japanese, Puerto Ricans like to clean their homes too including the car, the garden and the streets. They also have a practice of throwing buckets of water out of the window to do away with the bad juju of last year.
However and wherever we celebrate New Year, it illustrates how unique we all are.
But it is Scotland who owns the New Year celebration. The Scots call it “Hogmanay” (oge maidne, Gaelic for ‘new morning’) and it surpasses Christmas as the most important holiday of the year. Lips blue with the cold and waving the Saltire up high, streets in the larger cities will be jam packed with people swathed in tartan, singing ‘Flower of Scotland’ – Scotland’s national anthem. This festival of singing, dancing and making merry in the streets lasts from early evening on New Year’s Eve until lunchtime on New Year’s Day.
In the smaller, more remote villages and western isles, New Year’s Eve are of long walks in the countryside along ice and snow-bound lanes with a guaranteed welcome, laced with alcohol, at every neighbor’s cottage.
Part of the tradition also includes the exchange of gifts like whisky, smoked salmon, grouse, shortbread, mince pies, haggis or a confection known as Black Bun. It’s a moist, rich fruit cake which has been sodden in brandy and rum for a year or more.
First-footers are very important too. So, if a dark-haired stranger bearing a bottle of whisky with a lump of coal in his pocket was the first across your threshold, you will have good luck and prosperity for the whole of next year.
In the very northern isles though, they celebrate the end of the yule season with Up Helly Aa. It consists of a variety of torch-lit processions culminating in the burning of a replica Viking longship built especially for Up Helly Aa.
Considering the Scots’ reverence for New Year’s Eve, it should come as no surprise to everyone that the ubiquitous New Year’s Eve song, “Auld Lang Syne” is a poem written by Scottish Poet Laureate, Robert Burns in 1788 and set to the tune of a traditional folk song. In Old Scots language, it means “old long time ago since.” It is well known in many countries, especially in the English-speaking world, and sung to bid farewell to the old year at the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve.
Happy New Year to all our readers.