Sunday, December 30, 2007 New year, old rituals By Mayette Q. Tabada
As treasured as heirlooms perhaps is every family’s collection of New Year superstitions.
According to Florencia Glinogo, her 60-year-old aunt, Gloria Velonta, has preserved in her Alegria household the time immemorial ritual of gathering on the eve of New Year 12 kinds of rounded fruits to augur the good fortune, health and wealth that will roll in with the changing of the year.
Leny Tagayong recalls no such rite was observed in their Samboan home, a few towns away. However, since moving to Cebu City nearly four decades ago, she has imbibed in traditions that she airs, like handed down finery, when the old year wanes.
From years of observing the brisk trading in wet markets, Leny purchases the “good luck” fruits for setting the tone of year. Unlike Gloria, though, she gathers 13, not 12, fruits. She makes an exception in the rule of rounded fruits to allow a pineapple as centerpiece since, according to Chinese friends, the many eyes reflect good luck winking many times.
Leny thinks it’s even better when she does not buy the fruits. Gifts of Davao pomelo, Carcar tacoy, Bangkok santol, mangosteen and grapes are hoarded in the fridge, not to be eaten until January 1, she sternly reminds her long-suffering husband and son.
Even if a pomelo might turn out to be arch, bitter or dry, Leny believes the generosity and loving thoughts of its giver still sweetens the year’s promises.
For Gloria, the good will of neighbors is part of the past year’s harvest for guaranteeing an incoming bumper year. So every New Year, Gloria goes up three flights of stairs in three neighbors’ homes, a different trio every year.
Whether the number of three is personally significant or just arbitrarily chosen, only Gloria knows. But she blends apparently well in a community that not only accepts but plays along with a local character’s quirk.
For quirk it is. According to www.oldsuperstitions.com, these are just endless variations of the same wish: prosperity and life.
Many cultures frown upon any of these from Dec. 31 to Jan. 1: empty pockets, empty cupboards, dying bonfire, leftover dregs, any dusting and cleaning activity that sweeps out luck, crying, breaking, incurring new loans, paying off old loans, and absolutely allowing anything to leave the house, without something coming in to replace it.
As if these were not enough, the same website lists what’s guaranteed to ease in the new, without slighting the old at the stroke of midnight on Dec. 31: loud noises to ward off evil spirits, open windows and doors, dancing in open air and around a tree, clocks wound afresh on New Year, black-eyed peas, new clothes, kissing at midnight, full larders and containers, and spotting a man passing outside one’s window (a sure preview of marriage before the year ends).
But if there is a common point for prosperity and perpetuity to merge, it is this: the best symbol of evergreen hopes is, on the eve of a new year, the birth of a child.
