Beware of the fish... and the chicken... - New Year's Eve customs

-




First of all, happy new year to everyone reading this post! I hope you had enough booze, partying, and good wishes for 2022. Last year was an interesting one, with great and awful things happening. I would gladly avoid the latter in this new one, and keep only the good things going forward. We have a lot of plans I want to share with you at the end of the post, but first let’s get to the topic I brought you today!

We have a lot of customs and beliefs surrounding the first day of the new year. I’m not saying I believe them, but for some reason I still try to follow these every year. I’m not sure if because everyone in my family does so, or if deep down I lean towards believeing, but they won’t do any harm, and at least there’s the illusion of a little control over what’s about to come. So let me share with you a few of the customs and beliefes we have for this day! Feel free to add yours in the comments, I’m really curious about them.

1. What you do on the first day shall determine your whole year

This is the most abstract, but basically it means no working, no housework, no arguments, or fights because then your whole year will be filled with these. So just chill, have fun, and everything will be alright. Easier said than done isn’t it?

2. Foods for luck

There are thing you should and shouldn’t eat on New Years Eve and on the 1st of January. We avoid chicken because it scratches the luck away, avoid fish because it swims away with your luck, but eat pork, because it will find and dig up your luck. Beef is neutral in this question. The other big thing here these days is food made of lentils. We don’t really eat lentils on other days, but today it’s a must have. Some say it beautifies young girls, others claim that every piece of lentil you eat now grants a piece of money in the following year, so eat it up, all of them! According to my grandma, this works with every other grainy thing, even with rice or couscous, but lentils are the original. We also have a sort of lucky charm, a little bag full of lentils going around as a present you should re-gift to someone else each year.

3. Housework to avoid

There are some things you should avoid doing to keep the luck in the house. First: no washing, because you can wash away our luck. This is quite unfortunate today, because I have a lot of laundry to do, and need fresh clothes for work come next Monday, but it will have to wait ☹ Also you shouldn’t take out the trash, because (as you guessed it) you might just take out your luck with it. Our ancestorst were really fond f the idea that luck was a movable object. My mother actually went further, saying we shouldn’t take anything out of the house for the same reason, just stay at home and chill.  


We have many other superstitions on other days as well, but they are fading, only these New Years Eve traditions took the test of time. What about you? Don’t forget to tell me where you live!


We also have big plans for 2022. Last year we released our debut novel (you can buy it here and here, we changed the blurb as well, hope it’s better now!), and the sequel, Caravan of Fire is coming this year (you can read about it here: link). We don’t have the exact date yet, but May or June are most probable. We also finished the first draft of our third book, I want to edit and translate it this year. It’s much longer than the first two, so that’s going to be a challenge.

If you don’t want to miss any news, subscribe to our monthly newsletter, we always include the new blogposts, interesting group promos and updates about our books!


Cheers,

Lory

 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

"Aspis" - An excerpt from Shackles of the Storm

-
Image
Hey there, travelers! It is Wednesday again, so time for a new Behind the Scalpel post. This time I got a treat for you. As you might now we are in the middle of editing the second english draft of our first desert fantasy novel, Shackles of the Storm. Now we are at a stage where I'm not entirely embarrased to share it online, so here's an excerpt from the second chapter, an introduction scene to one of our main characters - the firey mercenary, Ezair "Aspis" Hazra. Comments and feedback are appreciated, and most of all, enjoy! ~:O:~ Aspis The city’s detention cell made quite an echo, despite the many cracks in the time-worn board walls. A melody rolled around in the room like a gust of wind, dancing and jumping as the musician—a young man on the doorstep of his twenties—dictated. He played a shingara, a weird instrument ending in nozzles both ways, mixing the attributes of a tin whistle and those musical sticks you could buy in the ramashi bazaar that beeped and cooe...
Read more

Porphyria - The vampire disease

-
Image
  Hey there, traveler! It is really common for folklore and mythology to color the boring parts of existing phenomena, medical conditions and natural occurrences, but if you search hard enough, you might find a spark of truth under the myth. Cyclopses, centaurs, mermaids, the manticore, they all have a possible origin that got sewn among the sparkly threads of imagination. I think it’s interesting to look at some of these nuggets of truth and uncover them in some short, bite-sized posts. Today, we’re starting with vampires. Ever since we started working on our dark fantasy horror WIP, I’ve a sort of vampire fever, so I decided I’d share with you today something about that. To be more precise, I’ll tell you about a real-life disease that practically turns you into a vampire for real. Don’t believe me? Well, read on then, fellow skeptic! The name of the game today is porphyria.  I. How it works (or fails to work) First, let me entice you with a bit of biochemistry. As you might ...
Read more

Book marketing - How it went for us

-
Image
  We almost finished our debut novel, Shackles of the Storm in our native language (Hungarian), when we realized that we need others to read it as well. It is our book baby after all. So I dived into the depths of the internet to learn some marketing and boy… if you think writing a book is hard, then you ain’t see nothing yet.   In today’s blogpost I want to share with you how we started, what did we learn, and how it is going… 1. The authortube When I needed a new recipe, a way to insert the dishwasher, or anything related to DIY my first source was always youtube videos. So, naturally, I went there first when I wanted to learn more about the craft of writing, what it takes to get traditionally publish and how should we self-publish. After finding booktube, I soon came across the two biggest authortube channels – which I won’t name here – and realized, that I was the incarnation of Jon Snow in this world. I knew nothing.  So I started to religiously watch the videos...
Read more