The first recorded New Year’s celebration dates back 4,000 years to Babylon, when the first moon after the spring equinox marked a new year. In 46 B.C., Julius Caesar created a calendar with Jan. 1 as the first day of the year, partly to honor Janus, the month’s namesake and god of beginnings.
Though you may not know the exact words to “Auld Lang Syne,” you’ve probably at least hummed the tune at past New Year’s parties. Touched by the lyrics he allegedly received from “an old man,” poet Robert Burns sent “Auld Lang Syne” to Scottish Musical Museum in 1778. Translated as “Times Gone By,” the song’s message is that, despite the pain in doing so, we must remember and toast to those we’ve loved and lost in order to keep them close to our hearts.
The tradition to smooch at midnight isn’t a recent invention. According to Old English and German Folklore the first person you come across in the new year could set the tone for the next 12 months. The superstition doesn’t just apply to singles—if a couple ringing in the new year together doesn’t lock lips, then the future of their relationship might not be all that bright. So be sure to plant one on your significant other when the ball drops!
Another food-related custom is a bit more nutritious: Celebrants in Spain eat 12 grapes at midnight to ensure a fruitful year ahead, a tradition that began as a solution to a grape surplus in 1909. (The custom stuck and then spread to Portugal, Venezuela, Cuba, Mexico, Ecuador and Peru.) Each grape corresponds with a single month in the upcoming year: a sour second grape, for example, might foretell a bumpy February. The goal for most grape eaters is to swallow all 12 before the stroke of midnight.
In Mexico and South American countries including Brazil, Ecuador, Bolivia and Venezuela, it’s customary to ring in the New Year by sporting special underpants: red if you’re looking for love and yellow if you’re after money. In the Philippines, people believe that wearing polka dots—on their underwear or elsewhere—ensures a promising year ahead.
