This article by Ray Spitzenberger first appeared in Images for East Bernard Express, January 5, 2023.
My family celebrated New Year’s Eve together on Saturday, and my youngest daughter and youngest granddaughter flew back to New York on New Year’s Day, a bittersweet ending to a wonderful visit.
As a child, I looked forward to Christmas, but viewed New Year’s Eve observances as a little odd, even though fun.
With folks having immigrated from all over the world, Americans have many diverse New Year’s Eve traditions which they continued to celebrate in their new homeland. In some cases, these customs have continued to be observed, but I’m afraid some have faded away.
My immediate family used to celebrate seeing in the New Year with my Wendish grandparents and aunts and uncles (this was in the 1930s and 1940s). As a German, my father had grown up with similar traditions.
Our food and beverage traditions were to eat creamed herring prepared from salted herring out of a keg, homemade koch kase (cooked cheese) laced with caraway seeds, smoke-dried sausage, cut in pieces and flavored with mustard, green onions, vinegar, and, for those brave enough to add it, horse radish, and streusel coffee cake. For drinks, our custom was to make homemade egg nog, hot Kümmel (homemade by boiling caraway seeds in hot water) and beer.
Apparently all Wends really loved caraway seeds, but in Saxony, where the Wends came from, carp from the Spree River were eaten on New Year’s Eve rather than herring. Hopefully the carp from the Spree were better tasting than carp caught in Texas lakes and ponds!
While my Wendish family did the usual New Year’s Eve “things,” like shooting off fireworks at midnight and having a toast to the New Year, they also practiced the very ancient Wendish custom of jumping off the table at the stroke of midnight while jangling coins in their hands. Doing this would cause you to have plenty money and Good Luck throughout the coming year. As family members grew older, they jumped off the lowest table in the house, a coffee table.
As they jumped off the table, my aunts would say something like this in German: Das Jahr hat ein langem Schnabel, dennoch man braucht viele! (“The year has a long snout, therefore one needs very much!”).
I’m sure that each one of you reading my column has your own ethnic food traditions as well as unique ways to see the New Year in. So many, many cultures that I read about used to have, and some still do, special traditions about bringing good luck in the New Year.
Folks whose forebears came from Mexico have the custom of eating twelve grapes called doce uvas at midnight, one for each stroke of the clock, for good luck. They also throw a bucket of water out the window at midnight, an action also bringing good luck. And to insure wealth and food for the New Year, some burn candles.
Danish Americans make an unusual wreath cake called kransekage in preparation for the New Year. I think that tradition lives on.
In many cultures, a certain color was worn on New Year’s Eve, to bring good luck. The three most often worn good luck colors were/are purple, gold, and red. Purple is a symbol of royalty, gold means wealth, and red suggests abundance.
No doubt many of these old traditions are fading away. We did not observe any of them Saturday night. Well, uh, my wife did give me a jar of creamed herring (which she bought) on December 29.
Hoping and praying for a New Year of blessings for all of you!
-o-
Ray Spitzenberger is a retired Wharton County Junior College teacher, a retired Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod pastor, and author of three books, It Must Be the Noodles, Open Prairies, and Tanka Schoen.