Tradiciones Curiosas

CURIOUS TRADITIONS IN THE WORLD

 

All over the world people have maintained for years some traditions related to good luck. On the other hand there are many souvenirs which have their ownmeaning and history. Today I am going to talk you about some of these things.

In Italy, for example, on New Year´s Eve, instead of eating the typical twelve grapes that we eat here in Spain, they eattablespoons lentils, as a symbol of money for the next year. Additionally, especially the Romans and Neapolitans, have the tradition of throwing old things out the window after twelve o’clock, to freethemselves of everything bad in the previous year.

Other curious tradition takes place in Japan, where on Valentines Day, the young lovers go to mount Fuji to ring the “Love Bell” three timesmeanwhile they say the couple´s name, so that their relationships become stronger.

We continue in India, where every year, in October or November, they celebrate the Divali ritual, the lights party. Thehouse is cleaned in a special way and it is decorated with various themes and oil lamps or candles which are lit in the evening. For them cleaning the house means purifying our minds and hearts.Alternatively paper boats are thrown into holy rivers. It says that the further they go, the greater the happiness will be.

At the beginning I said that I would tell you about some souvenirs. First I ´dlike to talk about the typical lei from Hawaii, the flower necklace. A lei is the perfect symbol to show the beauty of the Hawaiian islands. In antiquity, leis were used as symbols of distinction andrank. A lei can be offered for a lot of reasons: friendship, welcome, love, party, desires for safety, congratulations, graduation, marriage, health, birth and many other messages of peace.

Tofinish with I would like to mention the matrioskas or multiple dolls, in Russia. The doll which is outside and is the biggest is the mother, and it says that it represented “Mother Russia”. This doll...