7 New Year’s Traditions From Around the World Your Family Can Use To Celebrate

Instead of just watching the ball drop, your family can incorporate some other fun New Year's traditions.

Fact checked by Karen Cilli

In our home, we ring in the new year twice. Once sipping sparkling apple cider while counting down the minutes to midnight and again about a month later during Lunar New Year when the children line up to receive their lucky red envelopes from Grandma.

During the new year, our bicultural identities (Chinese and Norwegian) foster warmth and togetherness with traditions that date back centuries. For example, the Chinese ritual of gifting children with red envelopes filled with money comes from a legend of a heroic orphan who defeats a demon. Go kids!

Of course, our New Year’s celebration is only complete by watching the crystal ball drop on the last day of the Gregorian calendar, a tradition (the celebration part, not the ball drop) that dates to ancient Babylon.

The end of a year, no matter where it lands or what calendar is used, is a beautiful time to reflect on lessons and experiences that create lasting memories. It is also a time to welcome new opportunities and renewed energy.

Many cultures worldwide have fun rituals to celebrate the new year. Here are a few family-friendly traditions you may want to learn more about to incorporate into your New Year’s festivities.

Make a Rangoli

Cheenu Kashyap, a kindergarten teacher from South Pasadena, California, likes to teach her students about the importance of Diwali, a New Year celebration with origins in her native India. To teach the meaning of the celebration, she tells the story of the Hindu God Lord Rama and his wife Sita’s triumphant return to their kingdom.

"The moral of the story is that good always wins over evil,” says Kashyap, who has been teaching for over 30 years. Diwali, or the festival of lights, is to “bring hope from darkness,” she adds.

For the occasion, she invites students to create rangolis, ancient Indian folk art of geometric patterns and floral designs, throughout the school’s asphalt playground. Traditionally, rangoli art is made on the ground around the home using edible materials, such as rice flour, to welcome people.

For children, sideway chalk works just as well, and rangoli designs are highly searchable online. Kashyap encourages her students to work collectively.

“It’s this kind of energy that flows through the children,” she says. “Even though we are different, we can all be together on this special occasion.”

Sing for Candy

New Year's Eve is synonymous with sweets in our home, a tradition that spans oceans back to my husband's ancestral homeland of Norway, where a ritual called Nyttarsbukk is still observed. Norwegian children go door-to-door on New Year’s Eve and sing in exchange for candy. Yes, it’s like celebrating Halloween twice.

The gift of song is joyous and unifying, either in front of an audience as intended, or just for each other—maybe even more so if you choose the latest Olivia Rodrigo ballad to belt out karaoke-style. End the night with too many Sour Patch Kids to create the perfect formula for family fun.

Be Like a Polar Bear

Put yourself in the furry paws of a polar bear and celebrate the new year in a truly Canadian way by jumping into a freezing body of water. The polar bear plunge, which started in Vancouver in the early 1900s, is a national New Year’s Day tradition. Symbolically, it’s an invigorating way to wash away old experiences and it’s also done to support a good cause.

The plunge is so popular it crossed the border to New York, where revelers created their own Polar Bear Club to dive into Coney Island’s icy waters for a charitable cause.

But make sure to plunge into the water with caution as there can be health risks, including a cold shock response which can cause drowning. It's also not advised for people with heart conditions.

If an icy body of water is inaccessible, you can splash in the bathtub and donate to a good cause. Or bring back the ice bucket challenge for just one day.

Go to the Beach

If submerging in ice cold water is not your idea of family fun, why not partake in an unofficial Costa Rican New Year tradition: head to the beach.

Costa Rica is home to some of the world’s most beautiful beaches, and to celebrate the new year, many Costa Ricans want to enjoy the beauty with loved ones. Picture it: beach chairs and coolers full of cold drinks under swaying palm trees.

A day at the beach can benefit your mental health, but if you can’t go to the beach, any body of water would do.

Let Them Eat Grapes

Every New Year’s Eve, Elizabeth Perez-LoPresti’s family participates in a food tradition. Before midnight, grapes of any variety must be washed and ready. Each family is given 12 grapes and tasked with eating them all within the first minute the clock strikes midnight to symbolically receive good luck.

The grapes, symbolizing the 12 months in a year, is a tradition that appears to have originated in Spain, where it has an official name: las doce uvas de la suerte, which translates to the 12 lucky grapes. And it’s practiced in many other countries too.

“I think the kids like to stuff their mouth with 12 grapes,” says Perez-LoPresti, who lives in Los Angeles.

To err on the side of caution for younger children and prevent choking, you can cut the grapes in half, says Perez-LoPresti. No official rulebook says this will cut your luck in half, too.

Buy New Underwear

If there were ever an occasion to splurge on new underwear, it would be for the new year, where in Bolivia, local vendors stock up on mostly red and yellow underwear.

Locals believe the color of your undergarments could help usher in certain vibes. Red is believed to bring love, and yellow can help symbolically bring you abundance (read: riches). 

Make Soup and Feast

In Japan, New Year celebrations cause bumper-to-bumper traffic to and from shrines and temples, where people go to pray and listen to the bells ring 108 times. This tradition is called Joya no Kane or Bell of New Year’s Eve.

“It is rung 108 times to exorcize your troubles,” says Ikue Sasaki, who lives in Tokyo.

There is also a custom of eating mandarin oranges, soba noodles, and ozoni, a bowl of soup made with vegetables and sticky rice cake. You can find recipes to make this traditional dish at home online.

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