From Netherlands to Mexico, here is how people across the globe celebrate New Year
While it is expected in India to countdown to the New Year with family and friends snuggled around in cosy gatherings, many people in China, Japan, the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and other countries celebrate with a great display of fireworks. Times Square, with its world-famous New Year’s Eve ball drop, is the best place to see the fireworks where a 12-foot glittering sphere weighing 11,875 pounds is dropped each year at the stroke of midnight, accompanied by celebrity music acts, light shows, and tonnes of confetti dropped over you. An event that has been immortalised in many Hollywood movies as millions of revelers celebrate the big night when the clock strikes 12.
Rotterdam in the Netherlands is thought to be one of the earliest cities in the world to begin celebrating New Year’s, while the fanciful New Year’s Eve lightshow in nearby Amsterdam is also well-known.
Because white is said to bring good luck in the New Year, people dress in white and crowd onto Rio De Janerio’s Copacabana Beach in Brazil to drink champagne, dance to samba music, and be dazzled by gigantic fireworks.
Another tradition in Brazil and several other South American countries is to wear underwear with a specific colour that can seal your fate for the coming year, such as red underwear for romance and finding love, green underwear for good health, golden undies for prosperity, and white underwear for peace. Peruvian New Year’s traditions are also a touch strange, with fist fights organised on the streets to settle old scores and start the New Year with a clean slate.
This odd New Year’s ritual originated in Cusco, Chumbivilcas Province, and is now practised across Peru as part of their local holiday named Takanakuy. New dishes and plates are kept in Denmark until December 31st, when they are affectionately shattered against the doors of friends and family as it is considered a good sign to have a heap of broken dishes on your doorstep for New Year’s, and people also climb on top of chairs and literally jump at midnight to bring good luck and banish evil spirits.
Another New Year’s custom in Denmark, Norway, Finland, and other Nordic nations is that the Queen of Norway invites royal visitors from all over the world to help prepare kransekage, a tall, tiered cake with marzipan icing that is typically covered with flags and other ornamental things. In Spain, the Spanish New Year’s tradition is to eat 12 grapes at midnight to represent good luck for the following 12 months, in the expectation that this will ensure adequate appetite levels and good health for the remainder of the year – a practise extensively observed in Latin American nations as well.
Mexico’s local residents celebrate the New Year with the tradition of families coming together to redecorate their homes in brand new colours that represent their hopes and desires for the New Year, such as the family that paints their house red to signify that they are looking for love, while yellow to signify that they are looking for new job opportunities. Parades in the streets of London, United Kingdom, feature a procession around Big Ben, as well as celebratory celebrations and midnight fireworks beside the river Thames.
The New Year’s Eve celebrations in the dynamic South African city of Cape Town last three days, with a free event featuring musical performances, light shows, and fantastic cuisine from more than 80 restaurants and food trucks lining up along the famed Victoria and Alfred waterfront. The New Year’s Eve ritual in Johannesburg, South Africa, is to hurl furniture and appliances out of lofty building windows.
While it is believed that you can bang away good luck in Ireland, so on New Year’s Eve, the Irish hit the walls of their house with bread to ward off evil spirits and bad luck, nothing beats the strange New Year’s custom Chile, where families spend the night in the company of deceased loved ones by sleeping at the cemetery. It is thought to provide soul peace, and this relatively recent custom began when a family leapt over the cemetery barrier to visit their late father’s grave and spend New Year’s Eve with him.
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