First footing
In Scotland and northern England the first visitor after midnight sets the year's luck; a tall, dark-haired man carrying coal, salt or bread is the ideal guest.
Calendar superstition
New Year superstitions
New Year superstitions: what you do on January 1 sets the pattern for the year: money in the house, no cleaning, no lending, specific foods for luck. First recorded: Roman era for the January customs; most household versions 19th century. That makes it around 2,000 years old — joint 15th oldest of the 45 superstitions we have dated.
- Earliest record
- Roman era for the January customs
- Written down in
- 1867 Harland and Wilkinson, Lancashire
Record: John Harland and T. T. Wilkinson, Lancashire Folk-Lore (London: Frederick Warne, 1867).
When it actually starts
How old is this one
First recorded
Roman era for the January customs; most household versions 19th century
That makes it
around 2,000 years old
Rank by age
Joint 15th oldest of 45 dated here
Category
Calendar
Romans exchanged figs and honey on the Kalends of January and treated the first day as a template for the year. The specific rules people follow now — what to eat, who enters first, what must not leave the house — were collected by folklorists in the 1800s, and vary by region more than any other set here.
14 of the dated superstitions here were written down earlier and 18 later, while 12 share its date.
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Primary source
As it was written down in 1867
“A red-haired person is supposed to bring ill-luck, if he be the first to enter a house on New Year’s Day. Black-haired persons [are on the contrary deemed so lucky that they] are rewarded with liquor or small gratuities for ‘taking in the New Year’ to the principal houses in their respective neighbourhoods.”
John Harland and T. T. Wilkinson, Lancashire Folk-Lore (London: Frederick Warne, 1867) — read the original text.
First-footing: the first visitor of the year decides its luck. This is the Lancashire version as Harland and Wilkinson wrote it down in 1867.
The versions people follow
What exactly is believed
Twelve grapes
In Spain one grape is eaten on each stroke of midnight, one for every month, and a missed grape means a difficult month.
No sweeping or washing
Cleaning on New Year's Day is said to sweep or wash the good luck out of the house, a rule found from China to the American South.
Money in your pocket
Starting the year with cash in a wallet or pocket is meant to keep money coming all year; paying out debts on the day does the opposite.
How the bad luck is traditionally undone
Most traditions work by doing rather than undoing: eating lentils, black-eyed peas or round fruit, wearing a lucky color — red in China and Italy, white in Brazil — and opening doors at midnight to let the old year out.
Where it lives today
Grapes, lentils and first-footing survive as family customs, and New Year resolutions are a secular descendant of the same idea: that the first day sets the template for the rest.
What people say
What you do on January 1 sets the pattern for the year: money in the house, no cleaning, no lending, specific foods for luck.What is going on
The largest cluster of superstitions people ask about, and the one most people follow while saying they do not believe in it. Behavior on a date has no mechanism to affect the following twelve months.Where it applies. Universal, but the rules contradict each other between countries — lentils in Italy, twelve grapes in Spain, round fruit in the Philippines, no sweeping in China.
Other calendar superstitions
Nearest in age
New Year superstitions are joint 15th oldest of the 45 dated superstitions here. Of those, 3 date from 1900 or later and 14 predate the common era.
First-recorded dates are the earliest documented appearance in written sources, not the earliest possible origin — an unrecorded practice can be older. How the dating works and where it is uncertain →
Sources
Statements of fact on this page were checked against these sources in October 2026. How we choose and check sources: editorial policy.
Cite this page
AstroHot. “New Year Superstitions: Origin, Meaning and When It Began.” Accessed October 28, 2026. https://astrohot.com/superstitions/new-year/
For Wikipedia
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