Five! Four! Three! Two! One! Happy New Year! Everyone has their own way of celebrating the New Year. Countries typically have a common theme of the way they celebrate but not everyone follows the same traditions. New Year is generally filled with joy, excitement, and new beginnings.
In China they celebrate with a 15-day festival but not on the first of January. It is celebrated based on the lunar calendar, and the dates typically range from January 21 through February 20. The festival is filled with firecrackers, fireworks, red clothes, and decorations. The reason for the red clothes is that red is considered to be the color of luck and young people receive red paper envelopes with money in them.
In the United States, people tend to gather up with their friends and family on New Year’s Eve and wait for it to hit midnight. Many watch the ball drop in New York City or watch fireworks go off.
In Spain and some other Latin countries it is a tradition to eat 12 grapes which count for each month of the upcoming year. Some may think it’s easy but the trick is that one grape has to be eaten with each bell strike at midnight. In countries like Mexico and Brazil, the color of your underwear determines what kind of year you’ll have. The color white represents peace and harmony, yellow is for wealth and success, and green is meant for well-being and nature. In Ecuador in order to get rid of any bad things that happened in the past year, people will set scarecrows filled with paper on fire. Ecuadorians also burn any photographs that represent the past year to them.
Breaking and throwing items is a common occurrence heading into the New Year for countries like Italy, Argentina, and Denmark. In Italy, some people will throw old furniture, which tends to consist of cushions and blankets out of their windows to demonstrate a fresh start for the New Year. In Argentina after the people shred their old documents and papers they will throw them out of their windows, which to them, symbolizes leaving the past behind. In Denmark it’s popular to throw unused plates at the front door of family and friends, which is believed to bring good luck. The more plates found outside of someone’s house the more luck they’ll have. What all these countries have in common is that they want the new year to be filled with joy and prosperity.
