I heard on the radio on the way to work today that if you do wash on New Year’s day someone will die. :eek:
I heard that at 11:59 you must run around and put a penny on each windowsill of the house to bring money.
These are both new to me. Mom says you must eat sauerkraut to bring luck (or at least cabbage.)
Share your New Years superstitions.
I don’t believe it, but I think it’s a nice tradition to serve black-eyed peas and greens. This is supposed to bring you money in the coming year. I just like how it tastes.
We always have oysters (either fried or in a stew; this year, both) and black-eyed peas.
…and of course, Mimosas.
In Italy you eat lentils to bring you money. Traditionally you cook them with pigs’ feet, but I prefer mine without. You should also wear red undies on New Year’s Eve for good luck.
My wife told me yesterday that her parents (of Polish descent) would eat sardines on NYE for luck.
In Japan, they have stacking boxes of food, traditionally enough for three days, and each item has some meaning for luck or good fortune. Unfortunately most of it tastes horrible (three-day old cold fish sausage???) and luckily my Japanese husband hates it all, so we don’t have it. That also means that I don’t remember the items and what they mean…
They do eat “Toshi-koshi soba” around midnight. Soba are buckwheat noodles, and they have to be as long as possible, to ensure a long and happy life!
(Two minutes to go for us, as I post this!)
Pork and sauerkraut on NYE for good luck is a german tradition that I happily follow whenever I can.
if you work on new years day it means that you will have work the rest of the year. I hope its true seeing as how I’m working through tonight and into tomorrow. Wohoo another year of hundred dollar a barrel oil.
You mean, if you spend new years day on the SDMB, you will have to stay on throughout 2008? 
I mentioned this in another thread, but I’ve since found that English as well as Scots tradition calls for a huge clean out of the house before New Year, so you start over ‘clean’ in both house and spirit.
Also, no housework on New Years Day. Put down that duster and step away.
But if we spend the year in a groundhog loop of whatever we were doing today - I’m going to be hungover for the whole year! Where’s that vomit smiley?
And go and visit “first foot” friends taking whisky sand shortbread and a lump of coal with you. 
Now that I have: I have grumpily ignored the whole thing this year.
All best wishes for 2008, everyone.
My best friend told me that at midnight (or close to it) you need to count all the money in your pockets and you’ll always have about that amount floating around, even when you think you may not have anything.
So I’d better stick a twenty in my jeans before midnight…
If you light a candle and look into a mirror in a darkened room precisely at midnight, you’ll see the face of the person you’re fated to spend your life with.
Back in the day, I knew a girl who did that and she saw the face of Paul Newman. Startled, she looked again and saw the face of Robert Redford.
Then she realized she was looking at the reflection of a movie poster.
I totally subscribe to this. (My maiden name was Macdonald…) Hence, my active participation in the hoarding/cluttering and de-slobifying threads of late. I have to finish dusting and taking out the garbage/recycling, put clean sheets on the bed, and I think we’re ready for a Clean New Year. Oh, dishes. Grumble.
I will have wine late tonight as I clean and tidy. Whoo! The excitement never ends. (But seriously, I am not the least bit interested in going out somewhere tonight. Dinner out with friends was good enough.)
My husband’s mother and grandmama used to open the front and back doors and bang pots and pans at midnight.
Bwah! But, oh, those few moments must have been glorious…
Maybe, but very short-lived because she also saw Katherine Ross.
I heard the “washing clothes on New Years Day” story from my mother 60 years ago. So I have always lived with that. My wife now follows the same tradition.
The Scots-Irish side of my family subscribed to the house-purging thing, and this year I’m participating, but not from fear of bad luck, but just because it needs it.
My parents always said you’ll have bad luck if your tree is still up on New Year’s, but I’ve never heard that anywhere else.
I spent an early part of New Year’s with an eclectic set including (but not limited to) a transplanted Belgian and a hipster duo, having a very fine late dinner with wine to kick off the heavy drinking later. Clothes washing came up, it’s bad luck to have dirty wash over New Year’s (I think that was already mentioned). It’s also good luck to eat something with feathers, so in was chicken, but apparently bad luck to have something without feathers with your hangover cure the next morning. Very long argument about whether or not unborn long-dead baby chicks, scrambled or over easy, had feathers or fur and if they qualified.
At midnight in Cuba we would throw a bucket of water out the door, kind of throwing out the year’s troubles. Another tradition is eating twelve grapes at midnight, but that one was very hard, since grapes in Cuba are ridiculously expensive and hard to find.
This new year’s eve, my first in the US, I ate the grapes and threw out the water. Although I was pretty wasted at the time so I when I say “threw out the water” I mean bucket and water followed the same path through the air.