In the United States, we celebrate ringing in the New Year with a ball drop or in Nashville, a note drop, as we countdown to midnight. There’s often a toast of champagne or cocktail to accompany the countdown but are you curious how other countries celebrate?
Taste of Home shared traditions shared around the world from eating grapes to putting a potato under your bed.
Japan – It’s a tradition to eat soba noodles. Toshikoshi soba, which translates to a “year-crossing” the long noodles means crossing from one year to the next.
Spain – Just twelve seconds before the new year, you must eat twelve grapes. Each one signifying a month from the previous year. It might bring you bad luck if you can’t eat the grapes before midnight.
France – Just like the US, the French drink champagne to ring in the new year but they also have a big meal called as le réveillon de la Saint-Sylvestre comprised of oysters, lobsters, and escargot.
Italy – Known for pasta, on New Year’s Eve, they instead eat lentils with pork. It’s thought to bring good luck for the year.
Columbia – There’s the tradition of placing three potatoes under your bed- one peeled, one partially peeled and one unpeeled. Just before midnight, you blindly select one of the potatoes – peeled means good fortune, unpeeled means financial woes, and half peeled means half fortune, half financial woes for the year.
Australia – There are fireworks displays throughout the country. The most notable one is at the Sydney Harbour Bridge where people will gather hours ahead of time to watch the display.
The Phillipines – They eat twelve servings of fruit of various varieties from grapes to oranges.
Denmark – After dinner, it’s a tradition to eat a tower of marzipan doughnuts.
Canada – Ice fishing is on the agenda for the new year. Celebrations on the frozen water ways last all night.
Irish – They will bang bread on the walls to usher out bad luck and invite good luck for the new year.
Brazil – Seven is a lucky number, so they will eat seven pomegranate seeds, and seven grapes. Some will jump seven waves in the ocean and make seven wishes for good luck.
Greece – They eat sweet bread at midnight, a coin is baked into the bread and the person who receives the slice containing the coin will have good luck all year.
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