New Year Superstitions and Lucky Traditions Around the World
New Year is full of things people do just in case. You eat something lucky, wear the right colour, clean the house before midnight but not afterwards, watch who comes through the door first and try very hard not to begin January by doing anything that could set the wrong tone for the next twelve months.
That last part explains a lot of New Year superstition. The year hasn’t happened yet, so the first few minutes can feel unusually important. If you can begin with money, food, love, travel, good health and the right person standing in your hallway, perhaps the rest of the year will follow.
The details change dramatically depending on where you are. Scotland worries about the first person through the door. Spain gives you twelve grapes and twelve clock chimes. Denmark expects you to get off the floor entirely. In Puerto Rico, water can send bad spirits on their way, while in Japan your first dream can become a sign of what the year has in store.
Some of these are still taken seriously and others are now mostly done for fun. Either way, they’re good examples of how a superstition can connect one small action with a much larger outcome.
Why does New Year attract so many superstitions?
There’s something unusually tempting about a clean dividing line. December 31 ends, January 1 begins, and suddenly you have a moment that feels as though it separates what has already happened from everything that could happen next.
That makes New Year perfect territory for luck. You can throw something unwanted out before midnight, bring something fortunate in afterwards, eat food that looks like money or make sure the first person entering your house is exactly the sort of person you’d like the coming year to resemble.
The Smithsonian explored this in its Midnight Magic look at New Year beliefs. Folklorist Jim Deutsch explains that the uncertainty of a new year encourages people to look for ways of influencing a future they can’t actually control. If eating one particular food or performing one small ritual might help, there doesn’t seem to be much to lose by doing it.
It also explains why New Year folklore is so obsessed with beginnings. The first visitor, the first meal, the first dream and even the first bit of housework can all be given more importance than they would have on an ordinary Tuesday in March.
There’s an interesting overlap here with the symbolism of the number 1, which is strongly connected with beginnings, independence and starting a new cycle. That doesn’t mean New Year superstitions came from numerology. It does show how easily the idea of the “first” something picks up extra meaning when people are thinking about a fresh start.
Scotland lets the first visitor carry the luck in
If you’re celebrating Hogmanay in Scotland, the first person through the door after midnight can matter quite a lot.
The tradition is known as first-footing. The first visitor of the new year is supposed to bring luck into the household, and the familiar version says a tall, dark-haired man is the best person to have knocking at your door. Turning up empty-handed isn’t ideal either. Traditional gifts include coal, shortbread and whisky.
Scotland.org describes first-footing as one of the best-known Hogmanay traditions and also records the belief that beginning the year with a dirty house can bring bad luck.
You’ll often see the preference for dark hair explained as a memory of Viking raids, when a fair-haired stranger arriving at the door would hardly have been reassuring. It’s a memorable explanation, but it’s safer not to present it as a proven origin. First-footing itself is well documented, but exactly how every part of the rule developed is less certain.
And Scotland didn’t have one universal rule about the visitor’s appearance anyway. Folklore collected on Canna in the Hebrides gives a different version. The National Trust for Scotland records a belief from the island that an unmarried person could have good luck if the first man through the door was fair while the daughter or mistress of the house was dark, or the other way around.
So if you’ve always heard that a first-footer absolutely must have dark hair, that’s the best-known rule rather than the only one Scotland ever had.
Even the New Year wind could tell you what was coming
People in parts of Scotland also looked beyond the doorstep for an omen of the year ahead.
In 1794, the minister of Kirkmichael in Banffshire recorded a local belief that the direction of the wind at New Year predicted the coming year. A southern wind promised heat and fertility, the west brought milk and fish, the north warned of cold and storms, and an easterly wind meant fruit on the trees.
The National Trust for Scotland preserves the account, along with another Highland tradition in which embers from the Burning of the Clavie at Burghead were kept for good luck.
This one really is an omen rather than a lucky ritual. You don’t control which way the wind blows. You look at what it’s doing and treat it as a clue about what hasn’t happened yet.
In England, you can let the old year out of the house
A wonderfully literal New Year belief found in England involves opening the house just before midnight so the old year can get out and the new one can come in.
One version has you open the back door to release the old year and then the front door to welcome its replacement. Other accounts simply open the doors and windows. It sounds rather less appealing when December is doing its best to freeze the entire house, but apparently that isn’t the point.
East Sussex County Council includes the open-door belief among older New Year superstitions and also notes that Scottish-style first-footing became familiar in northern England and the Isle of Man.
The symbolism isn’t particularly difficult to see. The year you’ve just lived through is sent out of the house and everything waiting for you next is invited in. If the previous twelve months were awful, you can understand the appeal of making absolutely certain they know where the exit is.
Ireland once beat hunger away with a loaf of bread
Records collected by the National Folklore Collection in the 1930s describe families striking a loaf or cake against the door on New Year’s Eve to keep hunger away for the coming year. One account from Shanagolden in County Limerick says the front and back doors were hit at midnight. Another from Ballycotton in County Cork says the head of the household beat the door with a loaf of bread to drive hunger away for the year ahead.
You can read several of these accounts in the National Folklore Collection at Dúchas. The belief turns something the family desperately wanted to have enough of into the thing used to protect them from going without it.
Irish New Year folklore also paid close attention to the first visitor. An account from County Offaly says a red-haired person entering first brought bad luck, while a dark-haired visitor was lucky. The same record warns that anyone leaving the family home on New Year’s Day should return carrying something, otherwise there might not be enough food during the year.
Other households avoided throwing out ashes, sweepings or water on New Year’s Day because that could mean throwing the household’s luck away with them. It’s very similar to the New Year sweeping beliefs found much farther away in East and Southeast Asia, although there’s no reason to assume the traditions share one origin.
Newfoundland once bounced bread against the door
Across the Atlantic, a remarkably similar New Year belief survived in Newfoundland. Folklorist Frank Furlong recorded a tradition from his St. John’s family in which everyone gathered in the kitchen and, one by one, bounced a loaf of bread against the back door to help keep hunger and poverty away during the coming year.
The bread wasn’t supposed to be damaged too badly because everyone then had to eat some of it. The accompanying rhyme asked for hunger to be driven out and food to be brought in, while one family member also understood the ritual as protection against fairies.
The account appears in Memorial University’s archive of The Newfoundland Quarterly. Furlong’s account also preserves a close connection with Ireland. Similar New Year Cake rhymes were recorded in Kilkenny, Kildare and Limerick in the nineteenth century, where the words were used to send famine away for the coming year.
This is one of those cases where the food itself becomes part of the protection. Bread represents exactly what the household is afraid of losing, so striking the door with it while ordering hunger away gives the family something physical to do about an otherwise frightening possibility.
Black-eyed peas promise money and luck in the American South
If you’re in the southern United States on New Year’s Day, a plate of black-eyed peas and greens can be doing more than feeding you.
Eating black-eyed peas is traditionally supposed to bring good luck, while leafy greens such as collards represent paper money and prosperity. Cornbread can join in too because its yellow colour is compared with gold.
The Library of Congress records black-eyed peas and greens as a New Year good-luck tradition in the American South. Black-eyed peas themselves have a much deeper history. The crop originated in the Old World and became closely connected with African American foodways after being brought through the Atlantic world, including by enslaved West Africans.
The Smithsonian gives the superstition an especially useful explanation. Black-eyed peas can resemble coins, greens look like paper money and cornbread resembles gold. Eat a plate full of things that look wealthy and you’re symbolically beginning the year with money already in front of you.
Nobody’s bank balance changes because of lunch, of course. That hasn’t stopped an enormous number of people making sure the peas are on the table anyway.
Spain gives you twelve chances at a lucky year
Spain’s most famous New Year superstition comes with a time limit. You need twelve grapes and you need to keep up with the clock.
At midnight on December 31, you eat one grape with each of the twelve chimes. Each grape is connected with one month of the coming year, and finishing all twelve in time is supposed to bring prosperity and good luck.
The tradition is followed across Spain, but Madrid’s Puerta del Sol has become its most famous setting. The clock chimes are broadcast nationally so people celebrating at home can eat along with them.
Spain’s official tourism site describes the twelve grapes as a New Year ritual for prosperity and good luck. It’s now so established that supermarkets sell packs containing exactly twelve grapes for anyone who doesn’t fancy counting them while everyone else is preparing to shout happy New Year.
The difficulty is part of the fun. Twelve leisurely grapes wouldn’t be quite the same. The clock is already moving into the new year while you’re trying to make sure every month begins with its grape accounted for.
In Italy, you can wear your luck and eat it
Italian New Year superstition gives you several ways of improving your chances, so you can arrive at midnight dressed for luck and then sit down to eat some more.
Red underwear is one of the best-known examples. Wearing red on New Year’s Eve is supposed to bring good fortune, and some versions become much more particular. The underwear can be worn backwards until midnight and then turned the right way around. Another version says it should be thrown away afterwards.
Then there are lentils. Their small round shape has been compared with coins, making them a natural food for anyone hoping the new year will bring abundance and money. Cotechino or zampone, both made with pork, traditionally accompany them.
Italy’s official tourism site describes both the red underwear and lentil superstitions, along with pomegranates and the twelve-grape tradition found in Naples and some parts of southern Italy.
The Italian page also repeats some very old origin stories for these customs. Those histories are harder to prove than the modern traditions themselves, so it’s better to be certain about what people do now than pretend we know exactly who first decided a red pair of pants could improve January.
Greece starts the year by smashing a pomegranate
A pomegranate looks much less lucky once it has exploded across your doorstep, but in Greece that can be exactly what you want.
On New Year’s Day, the fruit can be broken at the entrance to the home. Its many seeds are associated with abundance, fertility and prosperity, and the act is intended to bring good luck to the household.
Visit Greece includes breaking the pomegranate among the country’s New Year good-luck rituals. The same official guide also describes podariko, a Greek form of first-footing, and the lucky coin hidden inside the New Year cake known as vassilopita.
If your slice contains the coin, you’re supposed to receive good luck for the year ahead. Just don’t become so enthusiastic about finding it that your first event of January involves a dentist.
In Denmark, forgetting to jump is the unlucky part
Just before midnight in Denmark, you may notice people climbing onto chairs and sofas. They haven’t collectively decided the floor is dangerous. They’re getting ready to jump into the new year.
As midnight arrives, you jump down. VisitDenmark says forgetting the jump is supposed to bring bad luck for the entire year.
It’s one of the clearest examples of a phrase becoming a physical ritual. You don’t just say you’re jumping into a new year. For a second or two, everyone is actually waiting above it.
The superstition has remained familiar enough that Denmark’s official tourism site still warns visitors not to be surprised when the room starts climbing onto the furniture before twelve.
Romania makes plenty of noise to frighten the old trouble away
Romanian New Year folklore can get considerably louder. In parts of the country, masked performers go from house to house with bells, drums and whips, and the noise has traditionally been believed to drive harmful spirits away before the new year begins.
One of the most spectacular versions is the Bear Dance, particularly associated with Moldavia in eastern Romania. Performers dressed in heavy bear costumes dance to drums and other instruments, with the older belief giving the performance the power to purify the community and help bring fertility and prosperity into the year ahead.
Radio Romania International describes the New Year masking traditions as ways of driving away evil spirits. It also records another wonderfully direct piece of superstition. Households that refused to welcome the traditional New Year performers could supposedly face sorrow, poverty or a bad year.
So the visitors aren’t just putting on a show. Within the older belief, letting them perform is part of making sure the household starts the year on the right side of luck.
In Bulgaria, a decorated branch can carry New Year luck
On New Year’s Day in Bulgaria, children traditionally carry decorated cornel branches known as survachki. They lightly tap family members and neighbours on the back while wishing them health, long life and prosperity for the year ahead.
Bulgarian tourism information describes the New Year custom, with children visiting neighbouring houses and wishing the people inside health and good fortune.
The cornel tree is especially suited to the symbolism because it is associated with strength and early renewal. The cornel tree is associated with strength and early renewal, which suits a ritual meant to carry health and prosperity into the year ahead. The branch isn’t just decorative. Within the tradition, the touch and the spoken wishes are part of passing that good fortune on.
Serbian New Year masks can be worn to drive evil away
In the Serbian village of Vukovac, New Year can bring out a much stranger collection of visitors.
For the Starci Koledari tradition, local people dress in masks and costumes and parade through the village around Orthodox New Year. According to the National Tourism Organisation of Serbia, the masks are traditionally believed to chase away evil and help bring luck and prosperity during the year.
That makes the frightening appearance of the costumes part of their purpose. The worse they look to whatever might be lurking around, the better things are supposed to go for everyone else.
Mexico takes the suitcase out before the trip exists
If you want to travel more in the coming year, one Mexican New Year ritual tells you not to wait for the airport. Get the suitcase out at midnight and take it for a walk.
The ritual can involve walking outside with an empty suitcase or taking it around the block after midnight. Doing that is supposed to attract a year filled with journeys.
Mexico has plenty of other New Year beliefs to choose from. Mexico’s government tourism service records red clothing for love, yellow for money and luck, lentils for abundance, coins for prosperity and the suitcase ritual for travel.
Another government list includes sweeping from the inside of the house towards the open front door to send negative energy out. It even recommends throwing salt backwards over your shoulders as a way of purifying the year ahead, which has an obvious connection with the much wider superstition surrounding throwing salt over your shoulder.
The suitcase is especially appealing because the symbolism hardly needs explaining. You want travel, so you begin the year already moving with luggage in your hand.
In El Salvador, an egg can show you the year ahead
Most New Year rituals are designed to attract something you want. In El Salvador, one belief asks a different question. What is actually coming?
Some Salvadorans crack an egg into a glass of water and then look at the shape it forms. The resulting silhouette is interpreted as a prediction of what the new year will bring.
Visit Central America includes the egg reading among New Year traditions in El Salvador, alongside other regional beliefs involving lucky colours, candles, suitcases and sweeping.
This moves beyond attracting luck and into divination. The egg isn’t supposed to make the event happen. Its shape is read as a sign of something that hasn’t happened yet, putting it much closer to an omen.
Puerto Rico throws bad spirits out with the water
Water has a particularly busy New Year’s Eve in Puerto Rico.
In some parts of the island, buckets of water are thrown out of windows to drive evil spirits away. If you’re celebrating beside the sea, another belief tells you to enter the water backwards at midnight to keep bad spirits from following you into the new year.
Discover Puerto Rico describes both rituals as part of the island’s New Year traditions. It also includes cleaning the house before the year begins and eating twelve grapes, showing how local beliefs can sit beside customs that travelled from Spain.
The water ritual gives the change of year a physical direction. Whatever you don’t want following you gets thrown away from the house, while you move into the next year without it.
Brazil jumps seven waves for luck
Spend New Year’s Eve on a Brazilian beach and you may see people waiting at the edge of the sea to jump seven waves.
Each wave can be connected with a wish, and completing all seven is widely treated as a way of attracting good fortune for the year ahead. Wearing white for peace is another familiar part of Brazilian New Year celebrations.
Brazil’s official tourism site lists jumping seven waves among common New Year rituals and also acknowledges that several seaside traditions have roots in African-based religions in Brazil.
That background deserves some care. Afro-Brazilian religious practices aren’t interchangeable with superstition, and offerings connected with deities such as Iemanjá belong within living religious traditions. That background deserves some care. Afro-Brazilian religious practices aren’t interchangeable with superstition, and offerings connected with deities such as Iemanjá belong within living religious traditions. Jumping seven waves for wishes or good fortune has also become a widely recognised part of Brazilian New Year celebrations, and that’s the belief we’re looking at here.
Seven has its own long history of religious, cultural and lucky associations, which you can explore separately in the meaning of the number 7. That doesn’t prove Brazil’s seven-wave ritual came from the same beliefs, but it does make this another good example of how particular numbers become attached to luck.
In Kenya, the first day can become a preview of the whole year
One New Year belief documented in Kenya gives January 1 a lot of responsibility. Whatever you do that day could supposedly be repeated throughout the rest of the year.
If you spend New Year’s Day crying, for example, the warning says you’ll spend plenty more of the year doing the same thing. That gives you a fairly good reason to avoid arguments, bad moods and anything else you wouldn’t want repeated for another twelve months.
Kenyan scholar Joseph Mutei records the belief in his study of superstitions and their role in African society. He also makes an important point about its history. January 1 wasn’t traditionally New Year’s Day across African societies, so this is better understood as a superstition that developed around the adopted Gregorian New Year rather than an ancient Kenyan New Year rite.
The underlying idea will already look familiar by this point in the page. The beginning becomes a miniature version of everything expected to follow. Start badly and you risk repeating it. Start well and you’ve at least given the year a better example to copy.
In the Philippines, round things look like money
Philippine New Year superstition has found a very easy shape for prosperity. If it’s round, it can look like a coin.
Round fruits are placed on the table and polka dots can be worn on clothing because the circles are associated with coins and financial good fortune. The number of fruits and exact rules can differ between families, so you’ll see several versions presented as though each one is the official formula.
The Smithsonian’s New Year folklore episode includes Philippine-American curator Theo Gonzalves explaining the connection. Round fruit is eaten to invite prosperity, and polka-dotted clothing carries the same coin-like idea.
It works on exactly the same principle as lentils in Italy or black-eyed peas in the American South. Start the year surrounded by things that resemble money and hope the resemblance continues in a considerably more useful form.
In Japan, your first dream can be a New Year omen
You can control what you eat and what you wear. Your dreams are less cooperative, which makes Japan’s hatsuyume belief especially interesting.
Hatsuyume is the first dream of the new year, traditionally associated with the first nights of January. The dream is believed to give an indication of the luck waiting for you over the coming year.
The famously fortunate things to dream about are Mount Fuji, a hawk and an eggplant. Japan’s national tourism organisation notes that the first dream has traditionally been treated as a sign of a person’s luck for the next twelve months.
This is a particularly clear New Year omen. You aren’t performing an action to force good fortune into existence. You’re waiting to see what appears and then interpreting it as a clue about what comes next.
If you dream about something considerably less auspicious, that doesn’t mean your year has actually been decided before breakfast. It means you’ve encountered one of the many ways people have tried to read uncertainty at a point when the future feels unusually open.
Chinese New Year makes sweeping a matter of timing
Not every New Year superstition belongs to January 1. Lunar New Year traditions have their own rules about exactly when luck should be swept away and when the broom needs to be left alone.
Cleaning before Chinese New Year can be associated with clearing away the old and preparing for new fortune. Once New Year’s Day has arrived, though, sweeping becomes risky. The belief says you could sweep the new wealth and good luck straight back out of the house.
The Shanghai municipal government’s guide to Chinese New Year taboos specifically includes avoiding sweeping for fear of sweeping away wealth and good fortune. Breaking objects, using knives or scissors, throwing water outside and quarrelling are also traditionally avoided on the first day.
There’s a nice contradiction when you compare that with Puerto Rico or Mexico. In one tradition you throw or sweep unwanted things outward to get rid of bad luck. In another, doing that after the new year begins risks accidentally sending the good luck out with them.
Neither version is wrong within folklore. They’re different rules built around the same concern about what should leave the house and what you desperately want to keep inside.
Vietnam also pays close attention to the first person through the door
Scotland isn’t the only place where an unexpected early visitor can make a superstitious household nervous.
During Vietnamese Tết, the first person to enter the house in the new year is traditionally believed to influence the household’s fortune for the months ahead. Some families deliberately choose someone successful, respected or considered fortunate rather than leaving the first knock at the door to chance.
Vietnam Tourism advises visitors not to arrive uninvited at someone’s house during the first days of Tết because that first guest can be specially chosen to bring luck.
Another Vietnamese New Year warning will sound familiar after the Chinese example. Sweeping during the holiday can be avoided because of the fear that good luck will be swept away.
The similarity with Scottish first-footing is striking, but it doesn’t mean one custom must have descended from the other. The idea that the first person entering at the beginning of a new cycle could set the tone for everything that follows is simple enough to appear in very different cultures.
In New Zealand, the stars could give clues about the year ahead
New Zealand also has a New Year tradition that doesn’t fall on January 1. For many Māori communities, the rising of Matariki in midwinter marks the beginning of the Māori New Year.
The appearance of the stars could also give clues about what the coming year might bring. Tohunga kōkōrangi, experts in Māori astronomy, carefully observed how bright and clear the stars appeared and used those observations to make predictions about weather, food and the productivity of the year ahead.
Te Papa explains how each star was assessed for its brightness, colour and position before predictions were made about the new year. Te Ara also records these observations being used to predict the weather and the likelihood of a good harvest.
Matariki itself could be read as a particularly favourable sign. Te Papa notes that seeing Matariki high and bright was associated with good fortune, peace and wellbeing.
It’s better to describe this as traditional Māori astronomical knowledge and omen-reading rather than casually labelling the whole Matariki tradition a superstition. The part relevant here is the belief that the appearance of the stars could reveal something about a year that hadn’t happened yet.
There are regional differences too. Not every iwi traditionally used Matariki in exactly the same way, and some welcomed the new year with Puanga instead. That variation matters because there isn’t one single Māori version that applies everywhere in Aotearoa.
European settlement brought another New Year belief to New Zealand as well. Scottish settlers carried first-footing particularly strongly into Otago and Southland, where the first person through the door after midnight could be believed to influence the household’s luck for the coming year. Te Ara records the ideal New Zealand first-footer as a dark-haired man bringing whisky, food and fuel, and says the custom continued in some communities until the late twentieth century.
Why is the first person through the door so important?
Once you start looking for New Year superstitions, first visitors appear again and again.
Scottish first-footing is the famous example, but similar beliefs have also been recorded in northern England, Ireland, Greece, Vietnam and New Zealand folklore. The preferred visitor changes. One tradition cares about hair colour, another about sex, another about whether the person is prosperous, cheerful or considered compatible with the household.
What stays surprisingly consistent is the idea underneath it. The first person carries something of themselves into the house. If they’re fortunate, successful or otherwise desirable, some of that quality is supposed to rub off on the year.
It also shows how old superstitions can preserve social attitudes you probably wouldn’t want to recreate now. A number of first-footing traditions favour men and explicitly treat women arriving first as unlucky. That tells us what the folklore said. It doesn’t give us a reason to shut the door in someone’s face on January 1.
Why does New Year luck so often look like money?
Coins turn up everywhere once you start looking closely at New Year food.
Italian lentils look like little coins. Philippine round fruits and polka dots repeat the shape directly. In the American South, black-eyed peas can represent coins while greens represent paper money. Greece goes one step further and hides an actual coin inside the New Year cake.
It makes sense because money is easy to represent with ordinary food. You don’t need an elaborate charm. A bowl of lentils already contains hundreds of tiny things that look a little like coins, while a pile of leafy greens can become a table full of banknotes with only a small amount of imagination.
There’s also something reassuring about beginning the year with abundance sitting right in front of you. A full table promises there’s enough to eat now, and the superstition extends that plenty into the months you haven’t reached yet.
Cleaning can either protect your luck or destroy it
If you want one piece of New Year advice that works everywhere, “clean the house” definitely isn’t it.
In Scotland, starting the year with an unclean home has been treated as unlucky. In Ireland, some households avoided throwing out ashes, sweepings or water once New Year’s Day arrived because the household’s luck could go with them. Mexican traditions can send unwanted energy out with the broom.
But the timing matters. In Chinese and Vietnamese New Year beliefs, sweeping after the new year has arrived risks removing the good fortune you were trying to welcome. The house can be cleaned beforehand and then the broom gets a rest.
Those rules look contradictory until you notice that they’re really saying almost the same thing. Get rid of the old trouble before the boundary. Once the new luck has arrived, stop throwing things out.
Does doing any of this actually change your luck?
There’s no evidence that any of the above can decide what happens to your household until next December.
But New Year superstitions aren’t difficult to understand. You’re standing at the beginning of twelve months you know almost nothing about. You have plans, worries and things you desperately hope will be different this time. A tiny ritual gives all of that uncertainty somewhere to go.
It can also make the night more memorable and the belief becomes attached to the celebration even when nobody at the table expects it to control the future.
That’s why New Year is such a good home for superstition. For a few minutes, the future hasn’t had a chance to disappoint you yet. Everything is still possible, so there’s very little harm in giving luck a particularly enthusiastic welcome.
If you want more beliefs involving lucky grapes, broken pomegranates, unusual warnings and things people do just in case, you’ll find plenty more in Weird Superstitions From Around the World and the wider Superstitions and Omens collection.