[senior citizen]

After reading below, please share any personal traditions you recall growing up......or now participate in......such as, perhaps, the "cold water plunge".........my mom always told how her mother would have "white fish" or "whiting".....not sure which. She also would mention the story about the first person who walked into your home on New Year's Day.

New Year's Day
　
While celebration varies all over the world, common traditions include:
Making resolutions or goals to improve one’s life
Common resolutions concern diet, exercise, bad habits, and other issues concerning personal wellness.
A common view is to use the first day of the year as a clean slate to improve one’s life.

A gathering of loved ones
Here you’ll typically find champagne, feasting, confetti, noise makers, and other methods of merriment

Fireworks, parades, concerts
Famous parades include London’s New Year’s Day Parade and the Rose Parade in Pasadena, California.

Superstitions concerning food or visitors to bring luck
This especially includes circle-shaped foods, which symbolize cycles. The reasoning behind superstitions is that the first day of the year sets precedent for the following days.

A common superstition specific to New Year’s Day concerns a household’s first visitor of the year—tradition states that if a tall, dark-haired stranger is the first to walk through your door, called the First Footer or Lucky Bird, you’ll have good luck all year.

Also, if you want to subscribe to superstition, don’t let anything leave the house on New Year’s, except for people. Tradition say’s: don’t take out the trash and leave anything you want to take out of the house on New Year’s outside the night before. If you must remove something, make sure to replace it by bringing an item into the house. These policies of balance apply in other areas as well—avoiding paying bills, breaking anything, or shedding tears.

Toasting
Toasts typically concern gratefulness for the past year’s blessings, hope and luck or the future, and thanking guests for their New Year’s company.

In coastal regions, running into a body of water or splashing water on one another, symbolizing the cleansing, "rebirth" theme associated with the holiday.
However, many nations and cultures within them have their own characteristic way of celebrating:

United States
American Citizens often celebrate with a party featuring toasting, drinking and fireworks late into the night before the New Year, where the gathering counts down the final seconds to January 1st. Some might even get a kiss at midnight.


Many English speaking countries play "Auld Lang Syne," a song celebrating the year’s happy moments. Americans often make resolutions and watch the Time Square Ball drop in New York City. Although much of this celebration occurs the night before, the merrymaking typically continues to New Year’s Day.


Football is a common fixture on New Year’s Day in America, usually the day of the Rose Bowl.


Some foods considered "lucky" to eat during the festivities include:
Circular shaped foods
Black-eyed peas
Cabbage
Pork


France
The French typically celebrate New Year’s with a feast and a champagne toast, marking the first moments of New Year’s Day with kisses under the mistletoe, which most other cultures associate with Christmas celebrations. The French also consider the day’s weather as a forecast for the upcoming year’s harvest, taking into account aspects like wind direction to predict the fruitfulness of crops and fishing.


Greece
Greeks celebrate New Year’s Day with card games and feasting. At midnight, the lights are turned off, followed by the Basil’s Pie, which contains a coin. Whoever gets the piece of pie containing the coin wins luck for the next year.

Soviet Union
The Soviet Union’s New Year’s Day celebrations have been greatly affected by the Union’s history. As religion was suppressed and Christmas celebrations were banned, New Year’s, or Novi God celebrations often include Christmas traditions such as decorated trees, which were reconsidered as New Year Fir Trees. As the suppression left, these traditions stayed part of the New Year’s Day celebration. The holiday is also celebrated with feasts, champagne, and wishes.

Spain
Spaniards celebrate New Year’s Day with the custom of eating twelve grapes, each eaten at a clock-stroke at midnight.

Cold-water plunges
In colder countries close to water, such as Canada, parts of the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands, it is customary to organize cold-water plunges. These plunges and races, sometimes called a Polar Bear Plunge, often raise money for charity or awareness for a cause.
For thousands of years, New Year’s has been a festival of rebirth and reflection, allowing people all over the world to celebrate another great year.


Auld Lang Syne
The song, "Auld Lang Syne," is sung at the stroke of midnight in almost every English-speaking country in the world to bring in the new year. At least partially written by Robert Burns in the 1700's, it was first published in 1796 after Burns' death. Early variations of the song were sung prior to 1700 and inspired Burns to produce the modern rendition. An old Scottish tune, "Auld Lang Syne" literally means "old long ago," or simply, "the good old days." The lyrics can be found here.


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A very happy, healthy, peaceful 2014 is wished to you and yours...

　

[springfield]

We like to have friends over on New Year's Day for brunch. Each person gets a slip of paper for their ashes of regrets. They write down anything they did during the year that they regret then we burn them. It is a way of letting go of negatives. Then we write down our wishes and hopes for the coming year and seal them in an envelop. We will give them back this new year's day. They aren't resolutions, just things we hope will happen. I think I wrote that I hoped our daughter and son-in-law would sell their WA house and buy the one they wanted in CO Springs, which did happen. I'll have to wait to open my envelop to see what else I hoped for.

Our brunch last year consisted of "lucky" food. It was fun researching the different foods around the world that bring luck.

[graciegirl]

We have to have sauerkraut cooked with pork on New Years Day.

[zcaveman]

Black-eyed peas at midnight for good fortune in the coming year.

Z

[asianthree]

for every pea you eat the same amount of good days are in store for you...Or it was a way your mom made you eat peas

[Sagitarius 6]

The Italian tradition in Rhode Island, to bring fortune for the coming year was to have lental soup on New Years day.

[2newyorkers]

We always had herring when my grandparents were alive. It was suppose to bring good luck. Looking back, I don't quite get the association.

[gomoho]

We go for the pork and sauerkraut - think it might be a Midwestern thing probably originating from the Slavic people that settled in that area.

[mac9]

Black eyed peas for luck, lentil soup for health, and collard greens for wealth!

[KathieI]

Originally Posted by mac9

Black eyed peas for luck, lentil soup for health, and collard greens for wealth!

What time is dinner on New Year Day?????

[KathieI]

My Italian family didn't have much of a tradition on New Years day except to have a pork roast, roasted potatoes and a veggie.

On New Year Eve, however, during our family parties, it was good luck to have sausage, peppers and onions at midnight along with crisp Italian bread... Yummm Yummm!!

[PaPaLarry]

Originally Posted by graciegirl

We have to have sauerkraut cooked with pork on New Years Day.

Gracie, We love that too, and had it for Christmas eve, along with fresh rye bread from Too Jays. Yummy

[jblum315]

Southern tradition: black-eyed peas and collard greens, both cooked with smoked pork. And my mother always made a pecan pie