In our country it is a tradition among the people to prepare the 12 different kinds of fruits to welcome the New Year. The people believe by preparing that fruits would bring them 12 months of prosperity. Do you practice this kind of a tradition? Or do you have any practice to prepare for the coming of the New Year? What is it?
I am aware of your tradition and love the way you people follow it. In fact I am a great fruit lover myself and eat fruits during my lunch time. As matter of fact I drink fruit juice and eat only fruits for lunch because my first meal of the day the breakfast is my heaviest diet. As far your question of following the tradition all our festivals do not complete without having fruits as one of the main ingredient as woeshiping material. The number may vary from 5-7 or eleven as per personal beliefs.
We donot have a festival to welcome the New Year as per 1st Jan. Instead, we have new yrar as per our calenders and during that time we have riyuals that does include fruits, flowers etc to welcome the coming year.
In the Philippines, that belief of 12 round fruits in the table for the new year's eve was introduced by the Chinese sometime in the 1980s. That silly idea was grabbed by gullible people so now fruits are selling fast before the new year's eve celebration. But we do not believe that although we have fruits on the table.... what we can afford to buy and what we can eat.
We use to welcome new year with a lot of fresh fruits, new clothes and money which is kept in a plate in front of a God's idol. We then pray to god for a prosperous year ahead. It is believed that if we happen to see this first in the morning it's really a blessing for a bright future. But I really love the idea of 12 fruits which represent 12 months. I would love to do it. In fact I would love to grow it and offer to God which makes it more sensible I guess. Traditions like this keep us close to nature which is really a good thing.
I don't do that because I don't have the money to and I didn't know about it. What we do is pray to God for prosperity and anything else we desire or need help with. We don't believe that we need to offer something to obtain help. We believe that if we deserve it, we'll receive. It's correct most of the time.
How nice the traditions of New Years we all have. Being Japanese we have mochi, which we put up on our refrigerator and family altar or other places of importance like our vehicles of business, place of business to bring prosperity & strength for the New Years. We have traditional dishes like ozoni made with dashi our soup base that's soy tasting with our mochi melting with a vegetable called mizuna. This image is fromLog In. This soup tastes like MacDonald's saimin broth with mochi, mizuna and this one has lotus root and carrots. Our family makes it simply with shiitake mushrooms, dashi, mochi and mizuna. Mizuna can be eaten raw too. This is mizuna or California peppergrass or Japanese Mustard. Scientific name is Brassica rapa var. nipposinica or var. japonica. We get ours from our favorite supermarket and it grows fresh on farms on Oahu. (image is from ebay.com.) Mochi is put traditionally with a tangerine with leaves and we are taught to leave it up for 7 days. We dress it up with ferns and put saiwaigami or good luck drawings for the New Years wishes all sitting on a wooden stand. (image is fromLog In) We also have kadomatsu for our front doorway entrance. This siteLog In has a picture of the kadomatsu and when to put the good fortune decorations up.
I have never heard about 12 fruits tradition to welcome the New Year. Interestingly, we follow our own calendar and our New Year happens to be in April. We celebrate out New Year by lighting out house and having a fest. Our New Year happens to be at the time when the Chinese celebrate New Year.
