Friday open thread: new year's rituals

[dolorosa_12]

2025 is off to a fairly good start for me: my first day back at work today went smoothly (and, astonishingly, my various inboxes were reasonably empty, although I had to laugh at the student who sent us emails asking for help with a research project on a) Christmas Day and b) New Year's Day — that's keen), I've been swimming, I've read some good books.

My prompt this week is about new year's rituals — not resolutions, but things you do every year, around the turning point of the year. These might be cultural (like the Spanish tradition of eating grapes on the chimes counting down to midnight, for example), they could be specific to your family or household, or something individual.

Mine are fairly boring:

The house has to be clean before the change over to the new year (this makes me feel as if I'm scrubbing the grime of the previous year away and starting with a fresh, new slate)

Just after the stroke of midnight, I post a song on social media, with lyrics chosen to reflect my feelings about the new year (2025's was 'Vidlik' by Onuka; the relevant lyrics in translation: Countdown. Only. Future. Ready)

I have to start 1st January with a walk (this year, tragically, it didn't happen because a) I had a terrible cold and b) it was pouring with rain with howling wind)

The first book of the year (which I aim to have read by the end of 1st January) has to be a good one; I tend to save something up that I trust to be excellent, and usually my judgement holds up

What about you?

Comments

[ermingarden]

My family has a traditional New Year's meal, passed down from my Latvian grandmother but having undergone some drift over the past few decades in the U.S. We eat peas and onions - originally this would have been grey peas, pelēkie zirņi, but those are hard to come by here, so we have green peas - and fish with scales. The fish scales, because they look like coins, stand for prosperity in the new year, as do the peas. The onions stand for the tears of the old year. (I also like to think of eating the onions mixed in with the peas as an acknowledgment that there will always be sorrow in the new year, because that's the nature of life - but we hope the sorrow is outweighed by joy!)

When I visited Latvia a few years ago, I did have the traditional dish, pelēkie zirņi ar speķi, grey peas mixed with onions and bacon. It's hearty and delicious! But for me, when I think of the New Year's meal, I will always think first of the green peas and pearl onions that we had when I was a kid. (This year, I made the lazy version: I heated some frozen peas up in the microwave and mixed in raw green onion.)

My grandmother left Latvia as a refugee from the second Soviet invasion. She rarely talked about her homeland or her family, and she didn't speak Latvian at home; she said that she had to shut the door on her life there in order to build a life here. But this was one of the few Latvian traditions she passed on to my mom and me. It must have meant a lot to her.

[dolorosa_12]

This was incredibly moving to read. How precious this tradition must be for her to have kept it and passed it down to you, given she let almost everything else go. I love that you're still cooking a version of it to this day.