New Year tradition: of polka-dots and coins
Filipinos consider the round shape to bring luck for the New Year. Perhaps because it’s the shape of money/coin.
Here are some of the Filipino traditions of bringing prosperity into the new year.
Wear your polka dots. Every New Year’s day, as far as I recall, my grandmother would wear a new, crisply-starched linen dress in fine polka-dot design.
Stock up on coins. Scatter coins all over the house – everywhere, and especially inside pockets and purses. (And as Delia Atay-atayan said “huwag alisin ang swerte” so don’t sweep the floor or pick up coins from the floor.
Round fruits galore. Display thirteen different kinds of fruits on the dining table. Grapes, apples, suha, calamansi, chesa, guava, water chestnuts, lemon, limes, clementines, mangoes, rambutan, mangosteen, santol… OK that’s 14 fruits, so you get one extra blessing, free. :-0
Don’t spend anything on New Year’s day. In fact, on New Year’s eve, put all your day’s worth of salary in a piggy bank and make that your ‘investment’ for the new year.
Oh, and don’t forget to jump real high while counting down to the New Year. You just might grow an inch or two.
What traditions do you hold on, as you usher the new year?
Tags: new year, tradition, filipino, round, circle, luck, prosperity, culture
3 Comments
Oooh I wrote about our traditions here: http://toni.marikit.net/?p=891
Highlights are jumping once midnight strikes (to make sure we grow taller in the new year) and I forgot to write that we light prosperity candles too!
He He He
* Open the doors and windows – inviting good chi
* Bang pots n pans – ward off bad luck
How can we ever forget the cannons, with cans as ammunition? You aim it at your neighbor he he he
satin po ngoriginate ang round coins and dots etc? o sa mga tsino?