While many Lakeside expats will be busy dressing up in glamorous duds to welcome in 2018 at New Year’s Eve galas, your Mexican neighbors may be more preoccupied with what underwear to sport while stocking up on firewood, fireworks and ammunition for their firearms.
Local families commonly celebrate New Year’s Eve with family and friends gathered for block parties centered around small bonfires set aflame in village streets. Many mark the climax of the festivities by setting off rounds of ear-splitting cohetes (sky rockets), with one perhaps chasing fellow party-makers around with a torito, the portable firework-spewing contraption shaped from bamboo into the form of a miniature bull.
Although authorities now frown on the practice, some retrograde macho-types will inevitably greet the New Year by pulling out their pistols or shotguns to fire off a few rounds into the night air.
There are multiple Mexican traditions associated with Año Nuevo that are intended to bring good fortune. One popular custom is to eat 12 grapes as the clock chimes midnight, making a wish while popping each juicy globe into the mouth. Another is to climb up a ladder and jump to the ground on the last stroke of the clock, leaving behind all things negative with a literal leap into the new year.
Some folks select a particular color of underwear to wear on New Year’s Eve festivities to favorably influence the next 12 months of their lives. White is chosen to bring good health. Yellow is used to attract wealth and abundance. Red is the color of choice to heat up love and passion. Others vow that good luck is assured by donning a well-worn clothing item together with a brand new one.
There are those who take care to celebrate the occasion dressed in natty attire, free of debt and with some cash money tucked in a pocket, doing so in the hope of perpetuating those characteristics throughout the entire year. Parents may press a few coins or bills into their children’s hands as midnight approaches to assure that the little ones get the new year off to a prosperous start.
Like folks all around the globe, most Mexican people will engage in the most common of New Year’s Eve customs: sharing hugs and good wishes with those around them and toasting the start of the year with a glass of bubbly, be it champagne, sparkling wine or hard cider.
As for dealing with the day after, Ajijic has just the thing to put people in an up-beat mood. It’s the annual Año Nuevo parade put on by neighborhoods in the west end Barrio de Tecoluta. Costume and float decoration themes change from year to year and are kept in secret until the colorful cavalcade rolls out from Seis Esquinas around 1 p.m. (or whenever it all comes together) for a full spin around town via Calles Ocampo-Constitición and Zaragoza. Expect a lot of hoopla that is guaranteed to make you smile and hoot.