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Arts and Culture
Vicki Adame

Suitcases and 12 grapes: Rituals promise travel and granted wishes

A family stands in front of a Christmas tree.
Yazmin Daleo and her family last New Year's Eve. Yazmin and her family have several New Year's Eve traditions that she grew up doing in Mexico.
Courtesy of Yazmin Daleo

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For many, ringing in New Year’s Day means throwing confetti in the air, wearing festive hats and toasting with champagne.

But for some, it also means eating 12 grapes and making a wish with each one, grabbing a suitcase and running outside for a walk and wearing underwear of a specific color. These are just some of the traditions or rituals Latinos do. It’s an expression of wishes for travel, love and prosperity.

Countries throughout Latin America, the Caribbean and Spain have specific New Year’s rituals, but in many instances, they’ve crossed borders.

New Year’s Eve rituals have been part of Yazmin Daleo’s life since she was a young child growing up in Mexico. Every year her family would go to her grandmother’s house where the rituals were part of the celebration to welcome the new year. They are now part of the yearly traditions she does with her children and husband.

As the clock strikes midnight, everyone grabs their suitcases and heads outside, she said. Doing this means you will travel in the coming year.

But there are several other things she does. At midnight, she sweeps the house making sure to sweep everything out the door. This gets all the bad energy out allowing for good energy to come in, Daleo said.

“At some point on the 31st, I put a plate with beans, rice and lentils by the front door, which means we’ll have food for next year. Around 10 o’clock in the morning, I put a coin in our shoes and at midnight we take the coin and put it in our wallets, which means that we will always have money in our wallets,” she said.

And of course, each person eats 12 grapes. The grape tradition has different variations. Some say you eat the grapes for luck in each month of the coming year, while others will make a wish with each grape.

Daleo admitted they also do the underwear.

Depending on what you need in the coming year, wearing the right color of new underwear is also important. Red underwear is for love while yellow is for economic prosperity. Daleo said when she first introduced the traditions to her Minnesota-born husband, he questioned what she was doing — especially going out in the cold to walk with the suitcases.

“But he does it now and he knows what’s coming and he’s like, ‘OK,’” Daleo said.

Angelica Soto said her mom started the suitcase tradition when she was in the fifth grade.

She admitted that she and her brother were skeptical at first.

“We’re like, ‘OK, Mom, what are you doing?’ And then somehow we kind of ended up doing it with her just because of the excitement of going outside,” Soto said.

Both she and her brother stopped doing the ritual with their mom when they were in high school. Her mom packed up the suitcase and told them she was ready to go.

“But we didn’t follow along, we should have. So she went outside by herself. And she just went in circles in the neighborhood and then came back and was like, ‘OK, I’m back from my trip,’” Soto said.

Her mom was the only one who traveled in the new year. Soto said she realized that what you manifest with those rituals happens.

This year, she plans to introduce the suitcase tradition to her own children who are 11 and 12.

“So it’s going to be interesting to see the look they’re going to give me that I gave my own mom,” Soto said, laughing.

For Camila Mercado Michelli New Year’s traditions are centered around family. Mercado Michelli was born and raised in Puerto Rico to an Argentinean mother and Dominican father.

New Year’s, she said, centers on family.

As the clock approaches midnight, she will find her loved ones to wish them the best when the clock strikes midnight.

“I have to be by my dad and mom, my grandparents. We need to hug them and kiss them right at 12,” Mercado Michelli said. “You won’t see a Puerto Rican hanging out without their family that day.”

Growing up in Peru, Lesby Ampuero remembers all the mercados, outdoor shops, selling yellow underwear.

“I remember my mom buying us yellow underwear to wear on New Year’s Eve,” Ampuero said.

And on New Year’s Eve, the entire house would also be covered in yellow.

In Peru, people also make giant dolls, or effigies for their yards and then set them on fire, as a way to get rid of anything that was bad or negative in the previous year.

While she no longer does these rituals, Ampuero said she plans to bring back the traditions when she has a family of her own.

Vicki Adame covers Minnesota’s Latino communities for MPR News via Report for America, a national service program that places journalists into local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues and communities.