It has become mandatory to party on New Year’s Eve and hang out or else the occasion will be considered “boring”.
The new year is not far away and everyone is busy making plans on how to spend the night of 31st December. People who seek to enjoy this day to the fullest are filled with enthusiasm. However, the celebrations now seem to have become a battle of not being left behind in terms of partying and hanging out.
It is a pity that what was once seen as an option to spend the eventful night has now become a compulsion. Having all that alcohol running down one’s body while wildly jumping and listening to famous trance music in a club seems to have become “partying goals”. There is hardly anyone left who plans on doing things differently. The problem is that we want to appear cool by uploading fake candids and putting catchy captions and the urge to do so, unfortunately, is completely natural given that everyone around is doing the same.
Among everyone’s “cool” plans, if there is someone who plans on spending the night with their family, taking a nice ride, or maybe simply cutting the New Year’s cake, that person will instantly be labeled boring. We need to accept that we are obsessed with alcohol, and a great chunk of it is because we have seen things that way. We have seen it in the movies, we have heard it from our elders and we have watched others do it. We have been waiting for the chance to experience drinking on our own, and celebrating without alcohol isn’t worth thinking of anymore.
If we think about partying during the New Year, it is funny in many ways. For instance, before starting anything new or commencing with any activity, we are praying to god or maybe eating something sweet. But when it comes to the New Year, we end up welcoming it by intoxicating ourselves with different substances i.e in an unconscious state. If we really expect to have a positive year ahead, how positively do we welcome it?
The New Year celebrations too seem to have become a victim of a party-frenzy attitude. And talking about doing something special, what’s special in doing something that we do on any random weekend? So, let’s break this obligation this year and actually do something different — something worth remembering!
We know all about the grape-eating tradition in Spain on New Year’s eve, thanks to Modern Family. On further inspection, when it comes to celebrating the New Year, it seems that everyone has a bizarre way of doing things and celebrating the ushering of a new year. In no particular order of peculiarity, we bring you the strangest of these traditions to herald in the new year!
1. Suitcase Walk, Ecuador
Image Credits: www.telegraph.co.uk
While some people go out for a little walk right before the clock strikes 12, many in Ecuador take their empty suitcase for a stroll around their homes in the hope of travelling more in the new year.
2. Funky Underwear
Red Underwear, Turkey
While opening the tap and letting the water run is one tradition said to bring abundance to the home, the women in Turkey wear red underwear which is meant to bring love in their lives.
Speaking of wearing funky underwears on New Year’s eve is not limited to just Turkey. In some South American countries wearing colored underwear will determine your fate for the new year. Red underwear means you’ll find love. Gold means wealth, and white signifies peace.
Changing Underwear At Midnight- Bolivia
It is much like the New Year tradition followed in Mexico where people wear yellow underwear for inviting luck with the only difference being that Bolivians wait for midnight put on yellow underwear. Bolivians believe that with the change in the undergarment at the strike of midnight on New Year’s Eve will also bring about change in their fortunes.
3. Gluttonizing, Estonia
Image Credits: mic.com
Estonians followed a custom of eating SEVEN times on New Year’s day to ensure food abundance in the coming year (and of course increasing their chances of obesity) It was believed that if a man was able to eat seven meals, he would possess the strength of seven men the following year.
Graveyard Camping, Chile
Image Credits: blog.crystaltravel.co.uk
Chileans take celebration with their families to a whole new level. Apparently, locals in central Chile, celebrate the new year’s eve in the company of their dead relatives. The town mayor opens the graveyard after late-night mass and thousands sit surrounded by the graves of their dear ones.
Underwater tree planting, Siberia
Image credits: shlok.mobi
This is the Siberian custom of cutting a hole in the ice covering Lake Baikal and diving to the lake’s bottom while carrying a New Year’s tree. Of course, only professional divers are bestowed with this task!
Broken Plates, Denmark
Image Credits: http://www.oddee.com/
Don’t be surprised if on New Year’s Day you have a pile of broken glass on your doorstep. In fact, you should be concerned if you don’t. In Denmark, throwing plates and glass at a door is a symbol of affection — the more shards on your porch, the more loyal your friends are. The more dishes thrown at you, the luckier you are!
Round things, Philippines
Image Credits: list25.com
Round food, round clothes, as long as it’s round it’s supposed to represent coins and usher in wealth. Additionally, the people turn on all the lights in the house on New Year’s Eve to ward off evil spirits. Some also open all the doors, cabinets, and windows and then run around shutting them after it hits midnight. If that wasn’t strange enough, many natives fill pots and pans with water and throw the water out the front door once the clock strikes midnight.
Takanakuy Festival, Peru
Image Credits: qcostarica.com
This annual Peruvian festival held at the end of December is all about people beating the living daylights out of each other. Competitors face off in a ring for a round of bare-knuckle brawling, which is overseen by local policemen. Takanakuy literally means ‘when the blood is boiling’, but apparently all of the fights are friendly, and represent a fresh start for the year. Battling their way they start the year off on a clean slate.
9. Wearing white and jumping over seven waves, Brazil
The most obvious custom is wearing a completely white outfit to symbolize peace and renewal, but there’s another tradition stemming from the Afro-Brazilian religion called Candomblé that originated from slaves in Bahia. After the clock strikes midnight, people head to the sea and jump over seven waves. This is so that they earn the goodwill of Iemanjá, goddess of the sea.
During the traditional celebration of Kaliady, still-unmarried women place a pile of corn is before them, and a rooster is let go; whichever pile the rooster approaches first reveals who will be the first to marry.
Cheese and sweet cakes
Big Cheese Drop, Plymouth
Image Credits: www.visitsheboygancounty.com
While the people in Switzerland herald in the new year by dropping ice cream, the town of Plymouth, Wisconsin witnesses a big cheese drop. Every New Year’s Eve the town holds the Big Cheese Drop to help celebrate the dairy industry. Supposedly, a local artist creates an 80-pound chunk of Styrofoam cheese which is dropped from a height of 30 metres at the stroke of midnight. Naturally, you’ll find plenty of cheese-related refreshments, music, and games to fuel the lively atmosphere!
Sweet Coins, Bolivia
Image Credits: viralluxury.com
While food is concerned, people in Bolivia are not far behind. In Bolivia coins are baked into sweets and whoever finds the coins has good luck for the next year.
While each of these customs appear strange to us, they do share an optimism that’s hard to not appreciate. To some the New Year is just another set of months and days, for others it’s an avenue to begin afresh and open their doors for new experiences and new beginnings! Here’s to creating our own traditions this New Year’s eve!
Out with the old, in with the new. Happy New Year!
If you think that the best part about New Year’s Eve is partying and you are cursing your stars because you have to stay at home this year for some reason or the other, then you gotta check out this list of things which can probably help you in making this New Year’s Eve exciting. Here you go:
1. Meet the old you
If you maintain a diary or a scrapbook, go through it. Realise how stupid you had been when you started writing your diary and note the process of change. Relive the moments which are gone, point out the mistakes that you had committed and speculate about the ways in which you can become a better person. There is no better time to do this but the beginning of a new year. You can also go through your Facebook timeline to see what status updates, links and videos you shared this year!
2. Watch special programmes on television
Various channels offer a variety of shows to be watched on New Year’s Eve. Abstaining themselves from the regular melodramas, actors come across the audience in an entirely different form in order to entertain and amuse them. If you are a die hard fan of some television actor, look out for him!
3. Talk to your oldest buddies
Apart from just sending out a text wishing your friends a happy new year, take the initiative to actually talk to them. Pick out the people who were once a significant part of your life but you’ve been out of tough with and talk to them asking about their lives and how the year went. Trust me, you will end up reminiscing about the stupid acts you had done together.
4. Spend time with family
It has not been preordained that you have to spend the time with only your friends. Spend the eve with your parents, have a nice chat with them and reassert the importance of family. You can also cook something for them to make the night special!
5. Plug in your earphones
Create a new world for yourself. Get high without alcohol. Plug in your dearest earphones and forget the world.
New Year Eve comes only once in 365 days (well, mostly). Do not forget to make it a memorable occasion!
Oh, yes! It’s that time of the year again…when we forget the past and welcome the unknown future, when we open up our new diaries and stack the old ones for an inevitable dusty destiny, when we finally get down to cleaning out the closet for all the new things to come. The New Year and the overall festive mood bring with it a bunch of things that need to be done…but just wait a second, there are some things that you need not do this New Year’s Day. In fact, you should probably avoid them as much as you can!
1. Make a list or resolutions
Don’t. Just for once don’t put that pen to paper. We all know how this one goes – we make a list of unreal and passionate resolutions that somewhere, say after two days, become too much work for a year and dangle on our heads like a sword, a bitter reminder of everything we could have been. Well, what’s the point? Instead, start this New Year by acting on your goals. Do the little things and then slowly move on to the bigger ones.
Don’t just write, but do it, too.
2. Hold on to bad memories
We all have a tendency to hold on to the bad memories in life but whether it’s the backstabbing friend or an ex-flame, no matter how many unanswered questions remain in your head, take a deep breath and just LET IT GO. There is a huge chance that you will never get that closure unless you decide it’s time, and what better time than the beginning of a New Year?
Like Beyonce and Shakira have taught us, it’s just not worth the drama.
3. Drunk calls
There is a reason why you should always keep your phone away while drinking. There are things, dark and very embarrassing things, that your head and mouth and alcohol can do together that you didn’t even think you were capable of. Even though you want to be the first one to wish everyone, drunk calls are always a big NO.
And remember, while you are getting sloshed this New Year you want to enjoy the 31st and not wake up when it’s 2nd of Jan.
4. Forward all sorts of chain messages
This one is for those who see it as their duty to forward all sorts of chain messages – God loves you…God doesn’t…Forward to 15 people…lame optimistic stories. Let me break it down to you – NOBODY CARES.
No one wants these messages and unless your plan this year is to annoy your friends, this is the worst way to send out wishes.
Give them a call instead; it is a much more appreciated form of communication.
5. Make it a normal day
This may sound clichéd and the more pessimistic of us would go ‘What is so great about New Year anyway? It’s just another day!’
But it’s not. In fact, it is a reason to not make a day “just another day”. It’s a reason to celebrate, forgive and forget. So, go out there, enjoy yourself. Make this day about yourself and everyone around you and someday you might just get the year you think you deserve.
