New Year Rituals for Good Luck: 15 Traditions and When to Do Them

What are the most popular New Year rituals for good luck?

The most widely practiced New Year rituals for good luck are food customs and threshold customs: you eat something that stands for plenty, and you do something at the door so the old year leaves and the new one comes in well.

Almost every culture that marks January 1 has a version of both. What differs is the detail, and the detail is where lists go wrong, because a custom done at the wrong hour or with the wrong reasoning stops being that custom. The table gives fifteen with their origin and their moment.

What should you do before midnight on New Year's Eve?

Before midnight, finish things: clean, settle what you can, and put down in writing what you do not want to carry over. In most traditions the hours before twelve belong to the old year, so the work is clearing, not wishing.

1. Clean the house and take out the trash. In Scotland this is "redding the house," done before the bells so the year starts in order. The American Southern belief runs the same way from the other side: sweep on December 31, because sweeping on January 1 sweeps the luck out.
2. Clear the air. Open a window for ten minutes. If you use smoke, our guide on how to smudge your house gives the room-by-room order; a spray or a simmer pot does the job where smoke is not welcome.
3. Write the release list. On paper, by hand: what ended this year, what you are done with, what you forgive. Keep it to one page.
4. Burn it safely. Fold it small, light it with tongs over a metal or ceramic bowl with an inch of sand, outdoors or at the sink. Nothing else flammable within arm's reach.
5. Eat the year-crossing meal. In Japan that is a bowl of buckwheat noodles, cut easily to stand for cutting loose the hardships of the year.
6. Settle small debts and return what you borrowed. A widespread piece of folk advice in Britain and America: do not enter the year owing.

If you want the written version stretched over the whole turn of the year instead of one evening, the 13 wishes ritual runs from the solstice to early January and uses the same safe-burning method.

What do you do at midnight for good luck?

At midnight you open the door, make noise and eat the grapes. All three are about the threshold itself, the few seconds in which one year becomes the next.

7. Open the back door, then the front. The old year leaves by the back and the new one enters by the front. In an apartment, a window and the front door serve.
8. Make noise. Bells, pots, horns, fireworks. Noise at the turn of the year is one of the oldest and most widespread customs on record, usually explained as driving off whatever should not follow you across. A set of witch bells by the door is the quiet household version.
9. Eat twelve grapes. One with each stroke of the clock. Buy small seedless grapes and take them off the stem beforehand; twelve large ones in twelve seconds is harder than it sounds, and whole grapes are a choking hazard for young children, so quarter them.
10. Kiss, toast, sing. "Auld Lang Syne" is a Scots song Robert Burns sent to a publisher in 1788; it asks whether old friends should be forgotten and answers by raising a cup to them.

Where is the moon on New Year's Eve 2026?

At midnight on December 31, 2026 the moon is a waning crescent, 36 percent lit, in the last degrees of Libra, one day past last quarter. We calculated this from the NASA JPL DE421 ephemeris for both coasts.

That matters if you time your work by the moon. A waning moon is the conventional phase for release, and the first new moon of the year, the usual moment for setting intentions, does not arrive until Thursday, January 7, 2027, at 3:24 p.m. Eastern. So this particular year hands you a clean division: let go on December 31, and plant on January 7. The first full moon of 2027 follows on Friday, January 22, at 7:17 a.m. Eastern.

Two years in that run stand out. The turn into 2029 falls under a full moon: the moon is exactly full at 11:49 a.m. Eastern on December 31, 2028. And the turn into 2028 comes four days after a new moon, a young waxing crescent, which is the textbook sky for beginnings. Dates for the whole year are in our new moon calendar for 2027 and full moon calendar for 2027.

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

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What should you do on New Year's Day?

On New Year's Day you eat for luck, welcome the first visitor and avoid the things folk belief says will set a bad pattern. The old idea underneath is that the first day shows the shape of the year.

11. Welcome a first-footer. In Scotland the first person over the threshold after midnight sets the household's luck. Traditionally a tall, dark-haired man is best, and he brings coal for warmth, shortbread or black bun for food, salt, and whisky. Arrange it with a neighbor, or step out yourself and come back in with something in your hands; the rule is that nobody enters empty-handed.
12. Eat black-eyed peas, greens and cornbread. Peas for coins, collards for folding money, cornbread for gold. The dish Hoppin' John was printed in Sarah Rutledge's The Carolina Housewife in 1847, and its roots are West African rice-and-bean cooking carried to the Carolina Lowcountry by enslaved people. The custom also has a history beyond luck: December 31, 1862 was "Freedom's Eve," when Black congregations kept watch for the Emancipation Proclamation to take effect at midnight.
13. Or pork and sauerkraut, or lentils. Pennsylvania Dutch households eat pork because a pig roots forward. Italians eat lentils with cotechino sausage just after midnight because lentils look like small coins.
14. Leave the laundry. Collections of North Carolina and Appalachian folklore record the belief that washing clothes on New Year's Day washes a family member away. Sweeping, taking out ashes and lending money fall under the same ban.
15. Do one small thing you want more of. Write a page, walk a mile, call the friend. This is the folk logic of "as the first day, so the year," turned into something useful.

If you want the year's intentions on the wall rather than on a list, New Year's Day is the classic evening to make one; our guide on how to make a vision board shows the version that adds the obstacle and an if-then plan.

Which New Year rituals are for money and prosperity?

The prosperity rituals are the coin-shaped foods (lentils, black-eyed peas, round fruit), money in the pocket at midnight, and the recent cinnamon-at-the-door custom. The old ones work by resemblance: you eat or hold what looks like wealth.

• Cash in your pocket or shoe at midnight. Recorded across Latin America and the US: do not meet the year with empty pockets.
• Lentils, peas or twelve round fruits on the table, as above.
• Cinnamon blown in through the front door. A spoonful of ground cinnamon in the palm, blown from the doorstep into the house. This one spread on TikTok around 2020 and has no older written source we can find; our piece on the cinnamon ritual on the first of the month traces it. Blow gently and away from faces, pets and anyone with asthma.
• A money bowl started on January 1. A dish by the door that you add a coin to each day. Instructions are in how to make a money bowl.
• A bay leaf with one word on it. Written, held, and burned in the sand bowl or kept in the wallet. Modern, simple, popular.

Our abundance and prosperity collection gathers the candles, oils and stones people use for this kind of work.

Which New Year rituals are for love?

For love, the best-known customs are the midnight kiss, red underwear in Italy and Spain, and in Latin America sitting under the table to eat the twelve grapes. Yellow underwear, by the same color logic, is worn for money and luck in Colombia, Peru and Ecuador.

The under-the-table grapes went viral in English around 2023, but the color-of-underwear customs are older and widely documented in the countries concerned. If you would rather set an intention than rely on a color, write one sentence about how you want to be in love, not who with, and keep it for the January 7 new moon. Our guide to writing a petition paper shows how to phrase it.

What should you not do on New Year's Day?

Folk belief in the American South, Britain and Ireland says not to wash clothes, sweep, take anything out of the house, lend money, or cry on January 1. The shared reasoning is that the first day sets the pattern, so nothing should leave.

Treat these as heritage, not rules. Nobody's year was decided by a load of towels.

What are witchy New Year rituals?

Witchy New Year rituals are the same threshold customs done with deliberate intention: cleansing the home, burning a release list, protecting the door and setting the year's intentions by the moon. Most draw on the folk practices above.

• Cleanse, then protect. Clear the rooms on December 31, then mark the front door: salt across the threshold, a mist at the frame, bells on the handle.
• Light one candle from the old year into the new. Lit a little before midnight and allowed to burn past it, attended. White for a blank page, green or gold for prosperity; see our ritual candles.
• Pull a card for each month and write all twelve down. Check them next December.
• Keep the twelve nights. In German-speaking Europe the nights between Christmas and Epiphany are read as omens for the twelve months, one night each. The method is in our guide to the twelve nights.
• Set intentions on January 7. This year the calendar and the moon disagree by a week. Use the gap: rest on the first, plan through the dark of the moon, and do your new moon ritual when the new moon arrives.

A historical note for anyone who feels January 1 is arbitrary: it is. England and its American colonies began the legal year on March 25 until 1752. Many pagans count Yule, the winter solstice as the turn of the year instead, and others keep Samhain as the witches' new year. You are free to keep more than one.

Which New Year ritual fits you?

Choose the sentence that sounds most like your December 31.

Voices from practice: what people report

We do not publish invented testimonials. These are patterns that recur in public discussion of New Year customs, given as patterns and without names.

People who grew up with one of these customs describe it as family first and luck second: the grapes are about a grandmother's kitchen. People adopting a custom from outside their background often ask whether that is acceptable, and the answer they tend to get from those inside it is yes, if you learn where it comes from and do not claim it as your invention. A frequent practical complaint is trying too many rituals at once. And many report that the written release list is the one they repeat every year, because it is the only one that asks them to think.

What we don't promise

No grape, pea, coin, spray or candle will make the coming year lucky, prosperous or loving. There is no evidence that any New Year ritual changes what happens afterward, and we will not tell you otherwise. Money comes from income and decisions; if debt is the worry, a nonprofit credit counselor is the right call, not a ritual.

What these customs do reliably is mark a boundary, bring people to the same table, and make you say out loud what you want. Research on habit change, for instance the work of psychologist Katherine Milkman and colleagues on the "fresh start effect" (2014), finds that people are more likely to begin on goals at calendar landmarks. That is a finding about motivation on a date, and it says nothing about luck.

Practically: how to work with this

• December 28–30: buy grapes, peas or lentils; set aside an old bowl and sand; ask a neighbor to first-foot.
• December 31, daytime: clean, laundry done, trash out, borrowed things returned.
• 9 p.m.: write and burn the release list. Window open.
• Midnight: back door, front door, noise, grapes, toast.
• January 1: first-footer in, lucky meal at noon, no washing, one small act of the year you want.
• January 7, 3:24 p.m. Eastern: new moon. Write the intentions now.

If you want a single release rite for New Year's Eve, our guide to the burning bowl ceremony covers what to write, a script and the safe way to burn paper indoors.

Frequently asked questions

Sources & further reading

• Ronald Hutton, The Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain (Oxford University Press, 1996) — New Year's gifts, first-footing, Hogmanay and the 1752 calendar change.
• Sarah Rutledge, The Carolina Housewife (Charleston, 1847) — the earliest printed Hoppin' John recipe.
• Jessica B. Harris, High on the Hog: A Culinary Journey from Africa to America (Bloomsbury, 2011) — black-eyed peas and West African foodways.
• The Frank C. Brown Collection of North Carolina Folklore, vols. 6–7, ed. Wayland D. Hand (Duke University Press, 1961–64) — New Year's Day beliefs on washing, sweeping and first visitors.
• Hengchen Dai, Katherine L. Milkman and Jason Riis, "The Fresh Start Effect: Temporal Landmarks Motivate Aspirational Behavior," Management Science 60(10), 2014.
• National Museum of African American History and Culture, "The Historical Legacy of Watch Night" (accessed 2026).
• Moon phases, illumination and signs: our own calculation with Skyfield and the NASA JPL DE421 ephemeris (2026).

More for the turn of the year: the 13 wishes ritual · the twelve nights · Yule simmer pot recipes · how to manifest, and what research says