I don’t know about you, but my Facebook feed was filled with all the things I should and should not do today, eat and not eat, put out and not put out. It is dizzying.

Eat 12 grapes at midnight. Black-eyed peas and cabbage. Don’t do laundry. Sweep, don’t sweep. Shower, don’t shower. Don’t take the garbage out. Frolick. Make lemons into pigs. Make sure the first visitor to your home is a tall dark haired man, carrying whiskey and shortbread. Run around carrying an empty suitcase. Eat pork n’ kraut. Put money under your doormat. Something about a rabbit x3. Opening the front door, then the back, but then I read that you don’t open the door because you’ll let the good fortune out. Eat noodles! Don’t put money out, put just a penny out on NYE and bring it in on New Year’s Day. Blow cinnamon out the front door the morning of January 1st…

The list goes on and even went on to tell me what colour underwear to wear (red, in case you’re curious). Once upon a time, I was very, very superstitious and would have tried my damndest to do every single one of these things. I would have made lemon pigs and given them to my friends and neighbours.

When you dig into most of these, they are sort of folkloric. Things passed down from generation to generation. So long in existence now, no one really remembers why they are done. Other than they just are. One bit I saw said ‘Never let the first person who crosses your threshold on New Year’s Day be a blonde’ and it was cited it likely was because of the Vikings. We all know the Vikings first came to North America around 1000 AD. The whiskey and shortbread is another example of this, it is Scottish in nature, it has become part of their tradition – you come over on January 1, it is customary to bring good tidings of whiskey and shortbread.

Now, after the year we had in 2025, I was concerned that maybe I was going to bring on another bad year if I didn’t do some of these things. But I know the train wreck that was 2025 had nothing to do with what I did or did not do December 31 2024/January 1 2025. It didn’t really have anything to do with it being the Year of the Snake or a ‘9’ year in the Chinese Zodiac. It was just a year where some really sad, shitty, terrible things happened. No one could have predicted, guessed, or imagined all the things that went down. There weren’t three things (the rule of three) there were like a bunch (5 or 7, just off the top of my head, life changing, major events) because some years, all the stuff just happens.

But this is a new year, with new hopes and new dreams and we are just looking forward to tomorrow. ❤ Because it is all we can do.