INDEPTH: NEW YEAR'S DAY
New Year's celebrations
CBC News Online | December 31, 2003
People are drenched after office workers poured water from their windows during the traditional New Year celebration in Montevideo, Uruguay, Dec. 31, 2003. (AP Photo)
|
New Year's Day, as celebrated on the first day of January each year, is primarily a western tradition. But where it's celebrated, it's observed in a wide variety of interesting and often idiosyncratic ways.
Here are a few of the world's customary countdowns:
- At midnight, children in Puerto Rico throw pails of water out of the window. This is supposed to rid their homes of evil spirits.
- Spaniards and the Portuguese share a similar countdown ritual. When the clock begins to strike midnight, they eat a grape for each toll to draw good luck for the 12 months of the new year. The grapes are washed down with wine. In Spain, everything stops to observe this ritual including theatres, movies and concerts.
- The Swiss have a tradition of letting a drop of cream fall to the floor on New Year's Day. The spilled dairy represents the hope for abundance in the coming months.
- South Africa rings the New Year in with church bells and gunshots.
Filipinos look at fireworks as they welcome the New Year in front of a lantern-made palace in downtown Manila on Jan. 1, 2004. (AP Photo)
|
- Japanese New Year's celebrations marry traditional Shinto customs with contemporary modes of celebration. To keep evil spirits away a rope of straw – which stands for happiness and good fortune – is strung across the front of Japanese houses. When midnight comes, it's also a custom to start laughing – this is supposed to bring luck in the new year.
Buddhist temple bells issue 108 peals to symbolize freeing the faithful from the 108 earthly desires that are warned against by Buddhist texts.
- In Hungary, Jack Straw is burnt in effigy. The puppet represents the bad luck of the outgoing year.
- The Dutch burn Christmas trees in street bonfires. They also set off fireworks to drive out any bad spirits of the old year.
Preliminary New Year celebrations get under way on Tyneside, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, northern England, Dec. 31, 2003, with a traditional representation of the pagan Horned God on his way from Gateshead to Newcastle. (AP Photo)
|
- Austria's New Year's Eve celebrations are called Sylvesterabend, referring to the Eve of Saint Sylvester. A traditional punch made of cinnamon, sugar and red wine is made in his honour and enjoyed in inns and taverns decorated with evergreen wreathes, confetti and streamers. Evil spirits are cast away by firing mortars called böller. Midnight mass is another Austrian tradition as is a generous exchange of kisses when the clock strikes 12. The Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra performs the Straus operetta Die Fledermaus every New Year's Eve and again the next day.
- In Denmark, old dishes are saved throughout the year so they can be thrown at the front doors of close friends on New Year's Eve. A pile of broken dishes heaped at the door is a symbol of good luck and great friendship.
The traditional Danish meal on that holiday is boiled cod or stewed kale and cured saddle of pork.
- The British answer to the Times Square ball-dropping festivities in New York takes place in Trafalgar Square and Piccadilly Circus in London. Crowds gather in these areas to hear Big Ben chime in the New Year, when they join North Americans in the tradition of doling out New Year's kisses and singing Auld Lang Syne.
^TOP
|
|
 |
 MENU |
|
|
| MORE: |
|
|
|
