From swinging fireballs to gobbling grapes, here are the wackiest ways of welcoming the New Year around the world.

New Year Celebrations Around The World

New Year is one of the oldest festive occasions, which is universally celebrated. It is the time when people celebrate the arrival of the forthcoming year and bid goodbye to the year that has passed by. New Year is celebrated all over the world, though not necessarily on 1st of January. It is interesting to note that not all the countries follow the same calendar. Countries like China, India and Israel have their own versions of lunar calendar and celebrate New Year at different periods. Some countries prefer to celebrate New Year in spring, when its time to sow new crops, while others in autumn i.e. at the time of harvest. Irrespective of the different timings, the occasion is celebrated with same zeal and enthusiasm across the globe.

Different countries follow different traditions and customs on the New Year, mostly related to superstitions and chasing away of evil spirits. This is done so that the bad experiences of the past are forgotten and one starts afresh and hopes for the best in the coming year. For instance, in Australia, January 1st is a public holiday and at midnight, on New Year's Eve, people make a cacophony using whistles and rattles, car horns and church bells to chase away the evil spirits. Similarly, in various countries, diverse ways are adopted to celebrate the New Year, according to their long standing customs and traditions. Whatever are the rituals, one thing is for sure - there is hardly any part of the world that doesn’t celebrate this glorious festival.

World's Strangest New Year Traditions

From swinging fireballs to gobbling grapes, here are the wackiest ways of welcoming the New Year around the world.

Quick question: What will your wardrobe be on New Year’s Eve? Nice dress? Black tie? How about your, ahem, underwear? If you lived in parts of South America, it wouldn’t even be a question. In São Paulo, La Paz, and other spots, people don brightly colored underpants to ring in the New Year—red if they’re looking for love, and yellow for money.

No matter what we wear, though, New Year signifies a new beginning. Flipping open a fresh calendar, with its 12 pristine, as-yet-unmarked months, is perhaps one of the most universally hopeful acts we humans perform: finally, a chance to shrug off a year’s worth of worries, conflicts, and mistakes; finally, a chance to start over.

It’s no wonder we all welcome the holiday with such enthusiasm. Here in the U.S. (and in lots of other countries), the event is celebrated with fireworks and parades, carousing and toasts. Some cultures, though, have more unusual ways of ushering in the New Year.

In many countries, there’s a shared belief that specific actions taken on New Year’s Eve or New Year’s Day—or at the stroke of midnight when one becomes the other—can influence the fate of the months ahead. In the Philippines, for example, wearing polka dots and eating round fruits is supposed to ensure a prosperous new year; in Spain, wolfing down handfuls of grapes as the clock strikes 12 is said to have the same effect.

No matter how odd they may seem to us, though, these customs share an optimism that’s hard not to appreciate. Out with the old, in with the new!

Estonia

In (leaner) decades past, Estonians followed a custom of trying to eat seven times on New Year’s Day, to ensure abundant food in the coming year. (If a man ate seven times, he was supposed to have the strength of seven men the following year). Modern-day celebrations here, however—especially in the party-hearty capital of Tallinn—tend to revolve as much around alcohol as food.

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