Only a couple of days until Germany breaks out into a huge collective party for New Year’s Eve. The process will most likely look almost identical in different places. After all, even the catch phrase for Dinner for One says “The same procedure as every year”. The real question here is: How do other countries celebrate the New Year?
If you can count yourself as one of the lucky ones who has the pleasure of celebrating NYE in Spain, you might have come across one tradition involving loads of grapes. The grapes are consumed during each of the twelve chimes during midnight to bring luck into the house. The important thing here is to eat one grape for each chime, which means if you were to miscount, you’d be in danger of misfortune for the upcoming year.
In Bulgaria, on the other hand, things are slightly wilder. Twelve strikes on the back is said to bring both fortune and health to the one enduring them. The ones striking are, most of the times, children armed with Surwatschkas, thin cherry branches which are exchanged for little rewards.
Russians go really hard before they go home: Within ten days of non-stop partying they go into the New Year. Orthodox celebrate their own New Year on 13th January because they follow the Julian calendar and most places in Asia celebrate the Lunar New Year which is also later in the year. The Chinese, for instance, celebrate their form of New Year in a time period of 15 days with a multitude of different traditions such as: “Hong Bao”. In a nutshell, Hong Baos are little red envelopes with money that are given to the children. Another nice tradition comes in the form of long noodles that are consumed in whole – the longer the noodle, the longer the life.
