Well, we´re all getting ready to celebrate the New Year!

It made me start wondering....what are the different ways or traditions to celebrate New Year in your country? (or in your family?) I´m sure we all have different interesting things to share!

I´ll start:

In Spain, we have a very curious tradition related to New Years. It causes the prices of grapes to rise to spectacular levels in the days before New Year´s Eve.

Here, we listen to the twelve gongs of midnight.....and eat one grape per gong every time we hear it. So, the traditional New Years celebration in Spain is to eat 12 grapes for the 12 gongs you hear at midnight that lead to the new year.

It´s great fun; it´s supposedly lucky if you time everything right and eat all of them when you´re supposed to (without choking, hahaha). It´s harder than you´d think, because chewing and swallowing that quickly while stuffing grapes into your mouth is difficult, hahaha. I´ve only managed it a few times myself. That´s why nowadays, people buy seedless grapes, or take the seeds out of the grapes previously, or even buy canned grapes instead! (they´re stored in syrup, like peaches). Even if you don´t manage it, you get to laugh at your family´s faces as they´re trying to do it as well (puffy cheeks, LoL).

What do you think of this tradition? Let´s all share our own (well, I did already) and comment!

aaahh we eat grapes too! (but were from dominican republic so no wonder there similar) we eat grapes on our own time, after the midnight celebration. we make wishess on each one of the grapes, one for each month of the year. we dont stuff them in our mouth haha that would be fun. we also have a new years dinner, usually pernil with morro

How cool, another grape tradition! :D And how funny, pernil and morro, that´s ham and pig snout, right? My Father loves morro, and I love pernil. XD Is your pernil cured ham or regular ham? Our jamón is usually the cured kind (I remember it was somewhat hard to get in the States, though). Curious, "pernil" is originally the Catalonian word for ham/jamón.

I love finding those paralells between our cultures. :P

Wow, cool! :D

We don't have any new year traditions :/ Many people shoot fireworks but that's about it :S

When I was younger, we used to eat chicken salad sandwiches and watch fireworks. 

Nowadays, we don't do much. I watch the fireworks on my computer on CNN Live, because fireworks are illegal in our city (they cause a lot of accidents and injuries). 

And anyway, by midnight some of my family members are already asleep -.-

I'm sure many of you have already read my blog about New Years, but if you haven't, I'll just post the link.

http://www.myasianfashion.com/blog/view/id_10585/title_-New-Years/

Feel free to judge my terrible grammar, I was really excited when I wrote it

LaiaMoon wrote: How cool, another grape tradition! :D And how funny, pernil and morro, that´s ham and pig snout, right? My Father loves morro, and I love pernil. XD Is your pernil cured ham or regular ham? Our jamón is usually the cured kind (I remember it was somewhat hard to get in the States, though). Curious, "pernil" is originally the Catalonian word for ham/jamón. I love finding those paralells between our cultures. :P

ahh noo,morro (in my culture) is rice with beans cooked in it.....idk how to explain it better XD I guess it could be called arroz con habichuelas too. oh and we also have batatas!!(sweet yams) I love it sprinkled with salt and mashed a bit. I have to ask if its cured or not....i really have no idea how they make it either. they keep it top secret haha. I know they use cilantro in everything though,they love cilantro alot..and peppers(the sweet part) and onions they put those 3 ingredients in everything haha

neko_carnival wrote: LaiaMoon wrote: How cool, another grape tradition! :D And how funny, pernil and morro, that´s ham and pig snout, right? My Father loves morro, and I love pernil. XD Is your pernil cured ham or regular ham? Our jamón is usually the cured kind (I remember it was somewhat hard to get in the States, though). Curious, "pernil" is originally the Catalonian word for ham/jamón. I love finding those paralells between our cultures. :P ahh noo,morro (in my culture) is rice with beans cooked in it.....idk how to explain it better XD I guess it could be called arroz con habichuelas too. oh and we also have batatas!!(sweet yams) I love it sprinkled with salt and mashed a bit. I have to ask if its cured or not....i really have no idea how they make it either. they keep it top secret haha. I know they use cilantro in everything though,they love cilantro alot..and peppers(the sweet part) and onions they put those 3 ingredients in everything haha

Wow, talk about a wierd language deviation, hahaha, so it´s not pork at all.....XD Sounds yummy, though! (Cilantro is great in anything and everything IMO)