Across the world, many cultures have specific traditions to celebrate the transition from the old year to the new. In the U.S. and Canada, we associate New Yearbs with the ball in Times Square, kissing at the stroke of midnight, resolutions, and singing bOld Lang Syne.b But for many Spanish-speaking countries, one of the key traditions has to do with eating grapes as fast as possible.
The btwelve grapesb tradition comes from Spain, where it is called las doce uvas de la suerte (bThe Twelve Lucky Grapesb). To ensure good luck for the next year, people eat one green grape for each of the upcoming twelve months. However, you cannot just eat the grapes during the first day of the new year any time you feel like it. You must eat the twelve grapes starting at the first stroke of midnight on Nochevieja (bOld Night,b New Yearbs Eve) as one year changes to another. And you have to keep eating: with each toll of midnight, you must eat another grape, giving you about twelve seconds to consume all of them. If you can finish all dozen grapesbyou canbt still be chewing on them!bbefore the last bell toll fades, you will have a luck-filled new year.
Where did this tradition come from? No one is certain, although it appears to be more than a century old. One story about the Twelve Lucky Grapes is that a large crop of grapes in 1909 in Alicante, Spain led to the growers seeking out a creative way to eliminate their surplus. But recent research through old newspapers shows that perhaps the tradition goes back almost thirty years earlier to the 1880s, where eating grapes was meant to mock the upper classes who were imitating the French tradition of dining on grapes and drinking champagne on New Yearbs Eve.
It can be difficult to consume grapes this fast, and the lucky grapes of New Yearbs Eve have seeds in them, making the job even trickier. (Seedless grapes are not common in Spain the way they are over here.) For people to manage eating all the grapes before the last stroke of midnight requires swallowing the seeds as well and only taking a single bite of each grape.
Oh, there is one more twist to the tradition: you have to be wearing red undergarments, and they have to be given to you as a gift. The origins of this part of the tradition are even more mysterious, and itbs anybodybs guess why this started.
Whether you go for the grape challenge or find another way to ring in New Yearbs, all of us at Comfort Central, Inc. hope you have a great start to the year and a, uhm, fruitful 2015.