13 Wishes Ritual: How to Do It, When to Start and What the 13th Wish Means

What is the 13 wishes ritual?

The 13 wishes ritual is a twelve-night practice for the turn of the year. You write thirteen wishes on thirteen slips of paper, fold them so you cannot tell them apart, and burn one each night without opening it. After twelve nights a single slip is left. That one you unfold and read, because it is the wish you are meant to carry out yourself.

The design is the clever part. Twelve wishes are handed over; one is handed back. You do not choose which. People who have done it for a few years tend to say the same thing about it: the value is less in the burning than in being made to write thirteen specific things you want and then being told, at random, which one is your job.

It goes by several names: the 13 wishes ritual, the 12 wishes ritual, the 13 magical nights, the Yule wishes ritual. In German, where it has been common for longer, it is simply die 13 Wünsche and belongs to the Twelve Nights, the Raunächte.

How do you do the 13 wishes ritual?

You need thirteen identical slips of paper, a pen, a fire-safe bowl and one candle. The whole thing takes about twenty minutes to set up and two minutes a night after that.

That is the complete ritual. Everything else you will see online, such as specific words to say, a colour of candle or a particular hour, is somebody's personal addition. Add what helps you keep the twelve nights; leave out what turns it into a chore.

When does the 13 wishes ritual start in 2026?

The 13 wishes ritual starts either on the winter solstice, Monday, December 21, 2026, or on Christmas Eve, Thursday, December 24, 2026. Both are in real use, and they are two different traditions laid over the same practice.

The solstice count is the one most American guides use. It begins on the longest night and ends on New Year's Day, which fits neatly into the US holiday calendar. The December solstice in 2026 falls at 3:50 p.m. Eastern (12:50 p.m. Pacific) on December 21; we calculated that from the JPL DE421 ephemeris rather than copying it. Your first slip burns that evening.

The Twelve Nights count is the older frame. In German-speaking Europe the twelve nights run from Christmas to Epiphany, and each night stands for one month of the coming year. On this count the first slip burns on the evening of December 24 and the thirteenth is opened on January 5 or on Epiphany, January 6.

Open the thirteenth wish on January 2, 2027 if you used the solstice count, or on January 5–6, 2027 if you used the Twelve Nights count. Some households begin the Twelve Nights one evening later, on December 25, and finish on January 5. Neither version is wrong; pick one and write the dates down before you start.

The moon in 2026–27: this year the wishes burn down with it

Here is something no other guide to this ritual mentions, because it only applies this winter. The full moon falls on December 23, 2026 at 8:28 p.m. Eastern, two nights after the solstice. The next new moon is January 7, 2027. That means both versions of the ritual run almost exactly along a waning moon, from a full disc to a dark sky.

If you care about lunar timing, this favours the Twelve Nights count in 2026: it starts the evening after the full moon at 98 percent and ends at 7 percent, a clean twelve-night descent. The waning moon is the phase practitioners traditionally use for releasing and handing things over, which is what burning a slip is. Our guide to a waning moon ritual for letting go covers that logic in detail. If you do not work with the moon, ignore the chart and use whichever calendar suits your household.

If you want to work with this yourself, this is what we use

Ceramic Incense Burner — Smudge Bowl for Charcoal & Cleansing Rituals

A ceramic bowl made to hold burning material and ash. It is what we burn paper slips in, with a layer of sand in the bottom, and it goes back to incense duty in January. $31.95

See the bowl

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How to write your 13 wishes

Write each wish as one clear sentence about your own life that you could recognise as fulfilled. That single test removes most of the wishes that go nowhere.

Three working rules come up in almost every version of the practice, and they are sensible whatever you believe about the mechanism:

• Make it yours. Write about your own life, not about what another person should do or feel. "My sister apologises" is not in your hands. "I have a calm conversation with my sister by March" is.
• Make it concrete. A wish you could not tick off is a mood, not a wish.
• Make all thirteen acceptable as the last one. Any slip may be the one you are handed back. If there is a wish you would hate to be responsible for, rewrite it until you would not.

That third rule is the one people skip, and it is the reason the thirteenth wish so often lands badly. Do not pad the list with things only luck could deliver. If a wish depends entirely on chance, split it: put the part you can act on on the slip.

13 wishes ritual examples

Good examples of 13 wishes are specific, personal and still worth doing if they turn out to be the thirteenth. Spread them across your life rather than writing thirteen versions of the same hope.

Notice that none of these is a promise the fire has to keep. Each one is still a plan if it is the slip left in the jar. Health wishes in particular should describe what you will do, not an outcome a doctor would have to deliver.

What happens to the 13th wish?

The 13th wish is not burned. You open it after the twelfth night, read it, and treat it as the one wish you are personally responsible for fulfilling in the coming year.

The common explanation is that the twelve burned wishes are "taken care of" and the last is left to you. We would put it more plainly. Twelve are released, which in practice means you stop gripping them. One is assigned. Because you cannot rig the draw, the assignment feels less like a resolution you chose and more like a task you were given, and people tend to take tasks more seriously than resolutions.

What to do with it: within a week, write down the smallest first step and a date. Keep the slip where you will see it. If the wish no longer fits by summer, you are allowed to say so; it was a random draw, not a contract.

Where does the 13 wishes ritual come from?

The 13 wishes ritual comes from the German-speaking custom of the Raunächte, the Twelve Nights between Christmas and Epiphany, but the wish-burning itself appears to be modern. We could not find a dated source for it that is older than recent popular guidebooks, and none of the pages currently ranking for it cites one.

What is old is the frame. The twelve nights are well documented in Central European folklore as a time set apart, when the year was thought to be open: animals were said to speak, the Wild Hunt rode, and each night foretold the weather or fortune of one month ahead. The practices recorded for those nights are mostly fumigating the house and stable with smoke, and divination, which is why they were also called Losnächte, lot nights. Jacob Grimm collected much of this material in the nineteenth century.

Thirteen wishes on paper slips fits that world well: twelve nights, twelve months, drawing lots, fire. That fit is probably why it spread. But fitting a tradition is not the same as being attested in it. The honest description is a contemporary ritual built on an old calendar, which reached English mostly through social media in the last few years. It works or does not work on its own terms, and it does not need borrowed age.

Is the 13 wishes ritual a Yule tradition?

Not historically. Nothing in the Norse or Anglo-Saxon sources on Yule describes writing wishes and burning them. The link is a modern one: American practitioners attached the ritual to the winter solstice, and many now treat it as part of their Yule. That is a legitimate thing to do as long as you know it is your tradition and not a Viking one. Our guide on how to celebrate Yule sets out what the old sources actually record, and winter solstice rituals for the longest night gives a one-candle rite that pairs well with the first slip.

How to burn paper wishes safely indoors

Burn one small slip at a time in a ceramic or metal bowl with a layer of sand or salt, on a heat-proof surface, away from anything that can catch. A folded paper slip burns hotter and faster than people expect, and it floats when it is nearly gone.

• Use a real vessel. Ceramic, cast iron or stoneware with a centimetre of sand. Not glass, which can crack, and not a decorative dish with a glaze you know nothing about.
• Keep slips small. A strip about one inch by three is plenty. Large sheets send burning fragments upward.
• Hold with tongs or tweezers, light one corner from the candle, and lower it into the bowl. Do not drop a slip onto a lit candle; wax and paper together can flare.
• Work near a sink or outdoors if you can. A stove top under the range hood is a good indoor spot.
• Tie back hair and sleeves, and keep the fir branches and paper napkins of the season well away.
• Let ash cool completely before moving it. Never tip a warm bowl into a trash can.
• Stay with it until the last ember is out.

If you rent, live in a dorm or have a smoke alarm directly above the only table, do the no-flame version. It is the same ritual.

Which version of the ritual fits you?

Pick the line that sounds most like your December.

Common mistakes with the 13 wishes ritual

The most common mistake is writing a wish you would not want to be handed back. The rest are practical.

• Recognisable slips. Different paper, a torn corner or ink showing through, and you will know which is which by night three.
• Thirteen versions of one wish. If every slip is about money, the draw tells you nothing.
• Wishes about other people's behaviour. You cannot be responsible for them, so they make a poor thirteenth.
• Starting without the dates written down. People lose count around December 28. Tick the nights off.
• Treating a missed night as failure. Burn two the next evening.
• Opening the last slip and doing nothing. The step after the ritual is the ritual.

Found this late? How to start after the solstice

If you find the ritual after December 21, start on December 24 with the Twelve Nights count, which is the older calendar anyway. If you miss that too, begin on New Year's Eve and run twelve nights to January 11, or begin at the next new moon; the 2027 new moon calendar lists every date. Because the practice is modern, the only fixed parts are the numbers: thirteen written, twelve released, one kept.

Voices from practice: what people report

We do not publish invented testimonials, so these are patterns that recur in public discussion of the ritual, stated as patterns and without names.

The most frequent report is surprise at the thirteenth slip, usually followed by the admission that it was the one the writer least wanted to work on. The second is that writing thirteen distinct wishes is harder than expected; many people stall at eight or nine, and what they add after that point is often the most honest material on the list. The third is the mid-ritual slump around the seventh night, when the novelty is gone and the holidays are loud. People who finish tend to be those who fixed a time of day at the outset. A smaller group reports wanting to know what they burned, which is what the sealed envelope is for.

The thirteen nights cross December 31. What people do at that midnight itself, from twelve grapes to open doors, is collected in our New Year rituals for good luck.

What we don't promise

Burning a slip of paper does not cause a wish to come true. There is no evidence that it does, and we will not tell you otherwise. Nothing here is medical, financial or psychological advice, and a wish about your health belongs with a doctor as well as in a jar.

What the ritual can reasonably do is narrower and still useful: it makes you write down thirteen specific things, it gives the last twelve nights of the year a shape, and it leaves you with one clearly stated task. Researchers who study goal-setting have long found that specific, written goals are pursued more reliably than vague ones. That is a statement about writing things down, not about fire.

Practically: how to work with this

This week, put both start dates in your calendar and decide which you are using. In the week before, cut thirteen identical strips and set out the bowl, sand, candle and tongs in one place, so that night one takes two minutes and not twenty. Write the slips in a single sitting, copy them to the sealed sheet, fold and mix.

Then keep the nights small: candle, draw, burn, done. If you want more ritual around it, our guide on how to write your own ritual shows how to add an opening and a close without making it heavy. A plain candle is all the flame you need; the ritual candles collection has options if you want one set aside for these twelve nights, and the altar and home pieces include fire-safe vessels.

If you follow the solstice count, your third slip burns on the night of the Cold Moon 2026, December 23. Our Cold Moon guide has moonrise times for eight US cities if you want to burn it by moonlight.

If burning the slips is the part that speaks to you, the burning bowl ceremony uses the same gesture for release rather than wishes, with a script and safety notes.

Frequently asked questions

Sources & further reading

• Jacob Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie (1835; English as Teutonic Mythology, trans. J. S. Stallybrass, 1880–88) — the Twelve Nights, the Wild Hunt, Perchta and Holle.
• Hanns Bächtold-Stäubli (ed.), Handwörterbuch des deutschen Aberglaubens (1927–42) — the standard reference for German calendar customs and lot nights.
• Ronald Hutton, The Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain (Oxford University Press, 1996) — midwinter custom and how much of it is recent.
• Edwin A. Locke and Gary P. Latham, "Building a Practically Useful Theory of Goal Setting and Task Motivation," American Psychologist 57 (2002) — why specific goals outperform vague ones.
• Solstice and moon data: our own calculation with Skyfield and the NASA JPL DE421 ephemeris (2026).
• National Fire Protection Association, candle safety guidance (nfpa.org).

More for the dark half of the year: the Twelve Nights, dates and rituals · how to celebrate Yule · winter solstice rituals · what to do with leftover candle wax