What are your favorite New Year's superstitions?

Even the most skeptical, who say they don't believe in anything, have some New Year's Eve custom that is repeated year after year. There are couples who usually spend midnight kissing, so that the love between them never ends, for example. It's not a superstition, it's just an affectionate ritual.

Is that you? Is there a? Do you know where this custom came from? Brazil is a country full of immigrants. People from the most different places on the planet came to populate this gigantic land and, with them, they brought a lot of habits, customs and rituals typical of their cultures.

Jews often use pomegranates at midnight. Eating – and keeping the seeds – of the fruit is a ritual of abundance and luck for the new period. The descendants of Iberian peoples usually burn papers with bad things written to leave their problems behind. For the new year only good things!

From the French came champagne. If you're going to celebrate, do it in style! Orientals, especially followers of the Buddhist religion, always carry out a great cleaning in their homes, to enter the new year in a clean and bright environment, attracting the same thing in the next 365 days.

The Italians came with a mania for eating lentils. And you have to get on the chair to do it! Also, the Romans used to keep bay leaves in the wallets, renewing them every year, without forgetting! Spaniards eat grapes. And it has to be 7!  

The descendants of African peoples – brought by force to Brazil, with slavery – left their culture ingrained in the Brazilian nation. At 7 waves that you can jump after midnight, the white clothes, the lit candles, the flowers thrown into the sea, everything came directly from the African continent and its different ethnicities.

The unique characteristics of the Brazilian New Year's Eve party have their originality strongly linked to the black people that populate the country. They are the ones that make the eyes of foreigners shine when they come to spend the parties here, especially in Rio de Janeiro.

The two most recent customs, however, can be considered 100% Brazilian. The first is the ban on eating birds. No eating animals that scratch backwards. The why of doing this? The answer is: It's bad luck. Proof that this is real? There is not! It's just a funny superstition, with no major consequences.

And the “newest tradition” of the XNUMXst century is the craze for wearing colorful underwear. Each color has a different meaning:

Red - Sex

Yellow – Money

Rose – Love

Green – Hope

Blue - Health

White – Peace

Orange - Family

Purple - Change

Silver - Innovations

Black – Mystery  

Do you believe that? Did you already know all the meanings of colors? There are people who connect only to the most traditional ones. The inclusion of different ones – black, silver, orange and purple – helps to further enhance this feminine custom that many men also adopt.

Most Brazilians like to spend New Year's Eve by the sea. The beaches of coastal cities are crowded throughout the country and the next morning arrives with many people sleeping on the sand, after Homeric binges. But cities in the interior of the country also have famous and popular celebrations.

Everyone has the right to celebrate the arrival of a new cycle in their life. Superstition or not, the important thing is the rite of passage of a new stage, leaving problems behind, with the hope of a better life. And may it reach all Brazilians in 2020.