There are many traditions that are celebrated throughout the world for ringing in the new year with luck and expelling the previous year's bad energies. Take a look at some of the traditions we found from Good Housekeeping!
- Eating Hoppin' Johns
- dish of black-eyed peas, pork, and rice on January 1 will experience luck and peace for the rest of the year. Often eaten with collard greens, which can resemble paper money, and 'golden' cornbread. The peas themselves represent coins.
- Try something round
- Many different cultures believe eating round foods will bring prosperity. Some even have you eating twelve round fruits, one for every month, to ensure a year of abundance.
- Dressing in dots
- Said to increase your chances of good luck in the new year
- Watching the NY Ball Drop
- This has been happening since 1907
- In some places, communities drop other things (PA- Giant Mushroom, WI- Big Cheese Drop, LA- Fleur de Lis)
- Wear white
- Brazil makes it easier to choose your New Year's Eve outfit — everyone wears white for good luck and peace.
- Jump 7 waves
- in Brazil, if you are close to a beach, go and jump seven waves and you get a wish for each one!
- Gift giving
- Christmas was forbidden in Soviet Russia for a time, so they had Father Frost visit them on New Year's to give them gifts.
- Make a resolution
- the tradition is very old — and likely dates back more than 4,000 years. Historians believe Babylonians, one of the first cultures to actually celebrate the changing of the year, made promises to pay debts or return borrowed objects.
- Make a fish dish
- Fish can only swim in one direction, forward like time.
- Smash a plate
- In Denmark, people go around smashing dishes on doorsteps. When you look in the morning, the more dishes, the more luck you'll receive.
- Eat 12 grapes
- Exactly 12, one for each stroke of midnight. Eating and finishing all 12 before the chimes are done will guarantee you good luck for the new year.
- Don't finish in time? Be prepared for bad luck!
- Kiss a loved one
- the tradition comes from English and German folklore, which believes that it's "the first person with whom a person came in contact that dictated the year’s destiny."
- Find your love
- The Irish believe that if you put a sprig of mistletoe (or holly or ivy) under your pillow on December 31, you'll dream of your future partner.
- Decorate your front door
- To Greeks, onions are a symbol of good luck and fertility, because they sprout even when no one is paying attention to them.
- On New Year's Eve, families in Greece hang bundles of onions above their doors as a means of inviting prosperity into the home.
- On New Year's Day, parents also wake up their children by gently bonking their kids on the head with the onions that were outside.
- Jump into the New Year!
- In Denmark, people stand on their chairs and "leap" into January at midnight to bring good luck and banish bad spirits.
- Buy a new lucky charm
- In Germany and Austria, there are a few different lucky symbols that you can gift to friends and family to bring them good fortune.
- These include pigs, mushrooms, clovers, and chimney sweeps.
- Wish Everyone a good year
- Walloon and Flemish farmers in Belgium make sure everyone can get in on the festivities, and that includes the livestock.
- That way they'll have a good farming year
- Swing the bread!
- The Irish bang Christmas bread on the walls of their homes. It's supposed to chase any bad spirits out of the house to start the new year off with a clean slate.
- Pack light
- In Colombia, people take empty suitcases and run around the block as fast as they can. It's supposed to guarantee a year filled with travel.
- Hide a surprise
- Guests eat vasilopita, or a cake or sweet bread that has a coin baked into it. Whoever finds the coin will have good luck for the next year!
- In Scandinavian countries, they do something similar with rice pudding, served either at New Year's or Christmas. One portion will have a peeled almond in it, and whoever finds it in their bowl is assured of luck in the new year and might even win a prize.
- Open your windows and doors!
- It's a common superstition that opening the doors and windows will let the old year out, and the new year in unimpeded.
- Smash the peppermint pig
- In upstate New York, they sell special peppermint pigs all throughout the holiday season. Everyone gets to take a turn hitting it with a special candy-size hammer and eating a piece for good fortune in the coming year.
- Predict what will come next
- In Germany, you can buy a Bleigießen (Bleigiessen) kit which will supposedly give you hints about what's to come in the year ahead.
- The tradition is to melt lead (now tin or wax, since lead is poisonous) on a spoon over a candle and then pour the metal into cold water. The resulting shape will reveal your fortune.
- Round balls represent good luck rolling your way, for example, while swords predict risk-taking.
- Eat long food for a long life
- In Japan, it's traditional to eat "toshikoshi soba," a dish with long, buckwheat noodles that's served hot or cold. The noodles symbolize longevity, and the hearty buckwheat plant represents resilience.
- Choose your underwear carefully
- Certain countries, especially in Latin America, believe that the color of your underwear can bring good things to you in the next 12 months.
- Yellow is for luck, red is for love and white undies bring peace.
- Break Fruit
- In Turkey, pomegranates are symbols of abundance. You'll smash the fruit on your doorstep. The more pieces there are and the farther they spread, the more prosperous you'll be.
- For a little extra luck, try sprinkling salt in front of your door to bring peace.
- Sing "Auld Lang Syne"
- It's an old folk song that was translated and meant to bring joy and luck into the new year.
- Send your wish down the river
- Singapore decorates its Singapore River with the wishing spheres containing the hopes and dreams of New Year revelers.
- Throw water out your window
- In Puerto Rico, they believe that dumping a bucket of water out the window drives away evil spirits.
- Puerto Ricans also sprinkle sugar outside their houses to invite good luck in, which is a little sweeter.
- Listen for bells
- In Japan, for ōmisoka, Buddhist temple bells ring out 108 times in the lead-up to midnight. Each chime is supposed to root out a worldly passion, such as anger, suspicion, or lust. The last toll comes at midnight, to start the next year out on a vice-free foot.
- Burn up the old year
- In Ecuador, the bad parts of the old year — or año viejo — are turned into effigies and burned. People make sawdust-filled dummies out of politicians, pop-culture figures, and other characters, and then burn them at midnight as a sort of cleansing ritual.
- For extra good-luck points, participants try to jump over the flames 12 times, once every month.
- Go for a dip
- Since the early 1900s, it's been a tradition to start off January 1 by submerging in freezing cold water, a ritual known as a Polar Bear Plunge.
- Often, participants with a high tolerance for the cold use the chilly dip as an opportunity to raise money for local nonprofits, so all of that teeth-chattering goes for a good cause.
- Be choosy about your first guest
- In Scotland, the Isle of Man, and some other parts of Northern England, the "first footer," as it was called, was extremely important.
- Tradition in those parts of the world states to select a man who is tall and dark (as protection against Vikings), who would come with simple gifts of coal, salt, shortbread, and whisky, representing the basic needs of heat, food, and drink.
- Save a wish for next year
- Ask your guests to write down a resolution, goal, wish, or note to their future selves, put it in a jar, and then save it for the year. On the next New Year's Eve, retrieve the jar and read the notes to see how far everyone has progressed.
