New Year's Traditions in Spanish-Speaking Countries by Elizabeth Tyler - Join The Lights

Bangladeshis do a get-together as well as enjoy with their families. That day, Cox’s Bazar becomes a popular tourist destination for both Bangladeshi and foreign tourists. In Egypt the new year is celebrated with fireworks and often evening parties with friends and family. Do as the Mexicans do in New Year’s Day, grab a suitcase, put few clothes inside and go wandering around the block. If you can’t really leave your place, place your suitcase in the middle of the room and walk around it several times.

From there, we can only assume that competitive spirit and/or merry drunkenness took over and led to the creation of the grape-gobbling challenge. In Finland, New Year’s Eve is usually celebrated with family or friends. Late supper is served, often featuring wieners, Janssons frestelse, and potato salad. A Finnish tradition is molybdomancy – to tell the fortunes of the New Year by melting “tin” in a tiny pan on the stove and throwing it quickly in a bucket of cold water. The resulting blob of metal is analyzed, for example by interpreting shadows it casts by candlelight. Families eat dinner together and sing traditional New Year’s Eve songs, such as “Cinco para las Doce”.

This is a symbolic custom to receive new hopes of change and leaving behind all that happened the previous year. Still in Spain , both men and women will usually wear red underwear if they’re looking for love, yellow ones if they are seeking fortune. In many South American and Caribbean countries, throwing a bucket of water out of a door or window means renewal and burning the past.

The celebrations generally go on past midnight into New Year’s Day, 1 January. Tradition in Spain (and other Spanish-speaking countries) dictates that once the clock strikes midnight on New Year’s Eve, everyone in the country is to eat 12 grapes. Each grape is designed to represent one of the following 12 months and the concept is supposed to bring luck for the coming year. Logically, an event that’s broadcasted by all the Spanish TV channels has to be perfect the first time around. That’s why the clockmakers in charge of the famous clock in Puerta del Sol carry out at least three practice runs to make sure the bells are working properly. Each time, curious onlookers gather in the square to listen to the 12 bell chimes and eat some sort of grape substitute… you see, the grapes only bring good luck if they’re eaten at midnight on the 31st.

They are burnt on the stroke of midnight to banish the old year and mark a fresh start in the new. Some of the braver Ecuadorians jump through these burning effigies 12 times to represent a wish for every month. Edinburgh, the Scottish capital, hosts one of the world’s most famous New Year celebrations.

Nothing like churros with a hot chocolate to fill you with warmth for the year to come. A New Year’s tradition from Panama, Mexico, Ecuador, and other places, people set up Muñecos after Christmas, and burn them for New Year. These dolls are effigies of people who played a rather large role in the news, politics, or even one’s personal life during the past year and burned as a way to say good-bye to the past. Countries around the world have their own traditions and superstitions when celebrating the New Year and these vary immensely. Hispanic countries, on the other hand, share almost the same New Year’s Eve traditions and superstitions. Another way to settle with the past is to sweep and clean the whole house.

“The year is gone, beyond recall” is a traditional Christian hymn to give thanks for the new year, dating back to 1713. The burning of dolls is a local tradition in the city of La Plata. Since changing the time zone from UTC-11 to UTC+13 in winter and UTC+14 in summer , Samoa is the first country to receive the New Year as a whole, sharing it with some parts of translate cupcake to spanish Kiribati. This has resulted in a growth in size and scale, and the proceedings now start with an afternoon of street entertainment, and fun run races for children, concluding with the church service, elite runners’ race, and presentations. Founded in 1958 by local runner Bernard Baldwin, it is run over the five-kilometre route of Guto’s first competitive race.