New Year Celebrations in Mexico

New Year’s Eve is mostly a quiet affair at homes across Mexico.  Many Mexican families stay indoors and pass the evening taking supper and drinks with close friends and family.  On the run-up to the occasion, markets undertake a brisk trade of grapes, as well as red and yellow-colored underwear. These satisfy a demand to uphold traditions which include eating twelve grapes at midnight—on each strike of the midnight toll while making a wish for each one—and, for the superstitious, wearing red underwear to draw luck in matters of love, and yellow underwear to draw luck in matters relating to finance.  Those with plans to travel may carry a suitcase around the block, so as to attract good fortune in one’s future travel plans.

The traditional foods taken on the eve of the New Year include bacalao, a salted dried codfish rehydrated and prepared with fresh chiles and green olives; tamales, natural corn-paste flavored using sweet or savory ingredients, wrapped in corn leaves and steamed; and bañuelos, light and crisp Mexican wafers. Favorite seasonal tipples, alongside tequila, include ponche, a fruit-punch spiked with rum, and rompope (eggnog).  Some people also celebrate the New Year by breaking open a piñata.  An older tradition, not witnessed frequently these days, is one where a well-heeled member of the local community throws coins—traditionally silver troy ounces, although today legal tender is more common—from the height of a rooftop, to children who gather these for spending in the New Year.

Street and public festivities vary by town and city. Some of the bigger colonial towns and cities may set-off a publicly-funded firework display; in Mexico City, the Zocalo (main plaza) and the area around the Angel of Independence will be filled with revelers shouting and dancing-in the New Year. Similarly-attended events will also take place in the main plazas of Guadalajara and Monterrey.  If you attend a major street event in Mexico, wear clothes which are not too precious to your person: a popular practice is for atendees to break-open eggs on each other; usually filled with confetti.

Popular ocean-side resorts like Acapulco, Los Cabos, Puerto Vallarta and the Riviera Maya fill up for New Year’s, and you can expect to pay a premium for ‘seeing-out the old and ringing in the new’ at these places.  Some of the more elegant hotels in Mexico’s colonial cities may host a dinner and dance event; room rates are in line with their high-season prices and there is an additional cover-charge to attend the event.  If you want a hotel deal in Mexico City during the week leading up to New Year’s Eve, you can find a bargain.  Some of the best hotels in the city are offering deep discounts, because their bread-and-butter trade—business travelers—are nowhere in sight. Rates jump back up early in January when the corporate expense accounts return to fill the hotels’ coffers.

With partygoers well-fed and properly watered, and grapes scoffed down, a ritual of hugs and kisses begins, in line with Mexican social etiquette, before dancing the night away. Some will instead choose to retire for the evening so as to awake in the daylight of a new calendar year.