Many cultures have a New Year’s tradition for bringing good fortune for the coming year, and at a Zoom work meeting yesterday, our VP asked what everyone’s cultural New Year’s tradition. I said “Hoppin’ John” and a couple of my coworkers, originally from Florida and North Carolina, nodded their heads in agreement. But of course, I also said “when I lived in The Netherlands, we stop at the ollebollenkraam on the corner to pick up a bag of freshly-fried ollebollen for New Year’s.
One of my colleagues, of Japanese descent, responded “mochi!” Of course, when I lived in Japan, I had mochi for New Year’s, usually freshly made and purchased at the local Shinto shrine after having taken my turn at ringing the shrine’s massive bronze gong. But I also always ate a bowl of soba noodles before heading out to the New Year’s festival on the shrine grounds.
The colleague of Columbian extraction provided us with the most interesting tradition, however. She said that in much of South America, you had to wear the correct color of underwear — read for good luck in love, yellow for good luck in finances. And, in Columbia exclusively, she said “carry an empty suitcase around the block, to ensure a year full of travel and adventure. Me, I’ll stick with the yellow kecks, I think. Better eye candy that way:
So, what’s the tradition from your culture?