New Year's Eve Traditions and Superstitions

New Year's Eve and New Year's Day are celebrated around the world through special traditions, with different cultures and countries tying special meaning to the new year and celebrating with different food-related traditions and superstitions to bring good luck and new opportunities. For example, people in Mexico eat grapes on New Year's Eve, while people in the southern United States eat black-eyed peas and collard greens on New Year's Day. In South Korea, it is a tradition to eat rice cake and dumpling soup on New Year's Day, and tamales are associated with family, unity, and celebration. The New Year's celebration varies due to different time zones, with Kiribati and Samoa being the first populated places to welcome each new day, and also due to different calendars, such as the Chinese calendar. New Year's Eve and New Year's Day are important social traditions in Western culture, which have been taken as an almost universal reference due to historical issues ranging from colonialism to globalization.