by Kevin Burton
Did you know being hit by a bus a New Year’s Day is a sign of bad luck to come? Not to worry though kids, many of the busses aren’t running today.
So I just said without saying it that I don’t think much of New Year’s superstitions. You can carry that over to all superstitions come to think of it. A superstition is a widely-held but unjustified belief.
Whenever I eat blackeyed peas it’s because I like them and they are a good source of fiber, which helps keep my weight down. I might or might not eat them today.
Country Living magazine, in a story in its online edition, said one new year’s superstitions is not cleaning the house, lest you sweep any away good luck you would otherwise have coming to you. In Colombia, carrying an empty suitcase around the house is said to be a sign of adventures to come in the new year.
So imagine you’re carrying around your suitcase and you trip over the clutter you didn’t clean up for fear of dislodging your good luck. You fall in a heap.
Make that a quiet heap and you have just your own shame to deal with. Fall in any kind of a noisy heap and now your wife comes and asks, “What happened?” It’s a legitimate question that you can’t answer while simultaneously holding onto your pride.
You see the tangled web we fall into with superstitions?
Making noise, opening the front door of your house (as long as you don’t go out) and getting a kiss at midnight all seen as good luck, according to the magazine. Eating chicken or lobster are seen as bad luck. Eating herring is good luck, but not if you’re still expecting a kiss.
The magazine says eating exactly 12 grapes at midnight (no more, no fewer) is good luck. Imagine now you have assembled the good grape quota and you drop one and there aren’t any more in the house. Do you invoke the five-second rule, call the grape good, pick it up and eat it? If not, you would have to leave it on the floor, otherwise you’d be cleaning and we’ve already learned that is a no-no.
And if you hesitated more than a millisecond in your decision, your jumbo cat Ronnie would sweep through and eat the grape, and Heaven help you if your hand is still in the way.
OK that last one is a dilemma only at my house.
“If it weren’t for bad luck I’d have no luck at all,” sang the Hee Haw boys in a song filled with “gloom, despair and agony on me.” The song was meant to be funny and these superstitions are too if you take them for what they are worth, amusement only.
No I did not watch Hee Haw when I was young. I’m a blogger right? That means I’m a researcher, OK? I look up things.
Let’s you and I start the year off on the right foot shall we?
I brought in the new millennium in 2000 by staying up until midnight. If I live to the year 3,000 I’ll do it again. Otherwise I will let how tired I am, or maybe what I have scheduled the next day, dictate what time I go to bed.
In either 1990 or 1991 I stopped with the midnight mandate. I don’t remember which year but I remember I was in Alaska. I went to some bar/restaurant at 1:30-ish to begin the new year vigil. At some point a single word popped into my head: “Why?” I got up and went home and have been better rested on Jan. 1 ever since.
As for resolutions, they famously don’t stick. If I come up with a good one I can put it in place on Feb. 17 or whatever date just as well as Jan. 1.
As for out with the old, in with the new, the calendar on the wall comes to mind. Anything else, I’m not sure it comes that clean and easy as just saying Jan. 1 is the new beginning.
Looking back at 2020 and 2021, I can only hope 2022 is some sort of exception and that better days swung into being on that midnight hinge last night.
Either way, may God bless your new year and you. Happy New Year. Be safe and thanks very much for reading!
Page 7 