Although most of us celebrate New Year’s, for the most part, mainstream American New Year’s celebrations aren’t all that imaginative. There are traditions, like getting together with friends or family and partying, drinking champagne, and watching the ball drop over a city skyline. However, these traditions are somewhat bland compared to Hispanics’ New Year’s rituals, like wearing yellow underwear, gobbling grapes, and caroling throughout town. New Year’s is a holiday rich in symbolism, as an opportunity to shed the past and start anew, and Hispanics richly celebrate that opportunity.
Let’s start with the yellow underwear. It’s a tradition for many South American women to put on a pair of brand new yellow underwear right before midnight for good luck in the new year. The yellow symbolizes gold and good fortune. The underwear tradition is said to go back to Spain in the Middle Ages when wearing bright colors was forbidden. So yellow underwear became a secret way of wishing for good fortune. Wearing yellow underwear is only a tradition for women, which is probably a relief to most Hispanic men.