Food

Happy New Year!

“Where there is hope,
there is no darkness.” ~ African Proverb

All over the world, people will be engaging a range of  traditions and superstitions on New Year’s Eve (NYE). Surprisingly, even after all the excesses of Christmas, many of these customs involve food!

My first NYE away was in Edinburgh for Hogmanay. Thousands of revellers filled an area around a place called The Tron. Countless strangers shared hugs and whisky and bagpipes echoed throughout the Scottish city. We sung Auld Lang Syne at midnight. We made merry!

I was told of a custom to carry a piece of coal with me, which I did. I don’t know why. I didn’t eat it!

Another NYE, this time in Madrid, we were told to eat 12 grapes at midnight, each one representing a month of the year ahead. We ushered in hope with every munch.

The following year we travelled to Sri Lanka for our Honeymoon and took a train to the Hill Country town of Nuwara Eliyah. We were booked for a 5 course NYE dinner but I didn’t make it to dessert. That NYE I got really ill, showing symptoms of malaria. I sweated and shivered out NYE in our hotel room and spent New Year’s day at a clinic getting blood tests. The doctor concluded that I had altitude sickness!

Another year we celebrated our first NYE in U.A.E. It was at a private party by a roof top swimming pool with hot pizza and cool champagne. ‘It girls’ in bikinis ponied about and intoxicated men jumped in the pool fully clothed! It was suitably hedonistic!

At midnight we enjoyed a spectacular, theatrical display of fireworks put on by the Emirate’s two iconic hotels along it’s coastline. I have never seen anything like that! It was epic, like ‘super stereo’ and we didn’t know which way to look. The night sky was completely filled with beautiful, explosive illumination.

Over the years our NYEs have become more low key, with more reflection and less jamboree. But we have established a tradition of hosting a New Year’s Day celebration.  The braai busily barbecues burgers and boerwors.  The Methode Cap Classique (MCC) flows.

But of course not all NYE rites and traditions involve food but most are about luck. In many places the colour red is viewed as auspicious and people will wear something red at new years parties.

In Italy there is a superstition about the first person that you meet after midnight. Apparently, if it is a priest, a doctor, a postman or a bell ringer, you’ve got trouble! In Johannesburg (‘Jozi’), a recent tradition has seen people throwing out furniture and appliances out of windows…out with the old, in with the new! Which NYE customs will you be continuing where you are?

However people are celebrating tonight, across the globe corks will be popping, wishes will be made and hope will be embraced. It’s a time to be optimistic. It all comes down to hope; hope for a better year, a better life, a better world.

This makes me think of the Sankofa bird. Sankofa is a word from the Akan tribe in Ghana. The word breaks down –
SAN (return), KO (go), FA (look, seek and take).

As the sun sets on 2107, look back, forge ahead and seek the new.

Wishing you all a bright year ahead.

© Maggie M / Mother City Time