This post may come a bit late for planning today's New Year's Eve festivities, but I got the idea only yesterday afternoon, and I still found a few things that are pretty easy to add to our New Year's celebration. We have teenagers that usually go a few different directions on New Year's Eve (dances, parties, etc.), so I hadn't made much of a New Year's Eve plan other than to hang out with my hubby. Then, I found out kids would be home for at least part of the evening, and my sister and brother-in-law would be around as well, so I decided to come up a few activities.
This led me to wondering how New Year's Eve was celebrated around the world. I am aware there are different calendars and different starts to the year in Chinese, Jewish and several other cultures, but I was curious about how other countries on the Gregorian calendar brought in the New Year. After searching the internet, I found some pretty fun (and a few wacky) traditions. My favorite site for this information was http://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifestyle/50-new-year-traditions-from-around-the-world.html, because it pretty much compiled all the information I found on numerous other sites.
From the New Year's traditions found on this site, my sister and I put together our own version of "New Year's Eve Around the World." We planned activities from different countries to do throughout the night as a way to count down to midnight.
We left the traditions of wearing polka dot clothes and colored underwear (Italy and some Central and South American countries) to bring, luck, prosperity, and love to the attendees discretion. We are following the Greek tradition of hanging an onion on our door, but the jury is still out on whether we will bop our kids on the heads with it to wake them up tomorrow morning. We considered the Danish tradition of smashing plates on the doorstep - it sounded like a lot of fun, but we live on a farm with dogs, cats and free ranging chickens, so we decided that was probably not the safest plan.
In Estonia, they believe eating 7, 9 or 12 times on New Year's brings luck for the upcoming year, because these are lucky numbers. The more you eat, the better the upcoming year will be. I think this is a fantastic tradition, although the only way I could possibly eat that many times is with very small portions. With that in mind, we decided to have a simple buffet set up for the duration of the party. Many cultures believe circular and ring-shaped foods bring good luck and prosperity for the upcoming year, because they resemble coins and/or they symbolize 'coming full circle.' We will be including everything from oranges and sliced carrots to German jelly filled donuts and kransekage, the traditional Danish and Norweigian marzipan ring cake.
Our tentative schedule is below, and I will add pictures as we get things done. If you try any of these New Year's traditions, please leave a comment on how it went. Also, feel free to share other fun New Year's traditions:
5:00 pm - Serve black-eyed pea stew with homemade bread. The stew originates in the Southern United States, and the making homemade bread and kneading love and good wishes into it is an Armenian tradition. We may even smack the bread on the wall a few times in honor of an old Irish New Year's tradition.
6:00 pm - Columbia has a tradition that if you carry an empty suitcase around with you, the upcoming year will be filled with travel. I plan to make small, paper suitcases that everyone can tie to their belt loop, wrist or whatever. That might be cheating a bit, but who wants to pull a real suitcase around all night?
7:00 pm - In the Netherlands, they make bonfires and burn their Christmas trees on New Year's Eve. Our Christmas tree is artifical, but my sister bought a small, live tree this year that has dried out enough she has offered to throw it into the flames. We have a big pile of scrap wood we've been meaning to torch for awhile now, so we should be able to get quite a large and toasty fire going.
Many countries burn effigies or scarecrows - sometimes of politicians. We will be making paper dolls (perhaps with certain politicians' faces) and we will burn those in our Christmas tree bonfire.
11:00 pm - We're on Central time, so this will be midnight on the East coast. In honor of New York Times Square, we'll be dropping our own ball from the upstairs balcony in our house. In honor of places in South Carolina and Georgia, we may also be dropping - wait for it ... a possum. Although we could probably find a live possum here in Texas, I would never bring one into my home, even if I could get it past my dogs. If we drop a possum, it will be a very fake one.
MIDNIGHT - We will attempt the Spanish tradition of eating twelve grapes, one for each stroke of midnight - I say 'attempt,' because I have one child that isn't very fond of fruit. We will definitely be doing the Danish tradition of jumping off of chairs (how did I not know about this one earlier?), we may sprinkle salt on our doorstep, like they do in Turkey, and we will definitely hold with the American tradition of kissing the person you want to continue kissing through the upcoming year.
