New Year's Eve at home, 

by Cristina Romero and Cecilia Rustarazo

     New Year's Eve is celebrated all over Europe. It has a pagan origin but the Christian tradition, for ideological reasons, with the purpose of combating the sun festival changed it into a religious festival.
     In Spain we celebrate it with a big dinner, decorating our house with garlands, bows and small bells. We also help the adults to set the table with candles, mistletoe and special glasses and cutlery.
    At the entrance of the house we install the crib, that is a representation of the Nativity scene, the figures of this crib go from generation to generation. At home we get all the family together for dinner: parents, brothers and sisters, grandparents and cousins, etc. On that night we usually have seafood, roast turkey or roast lamb.
During the night we sing carols, that is, special songs just for the occasion, like this typical Spanish one:

     After dinner we get impatient, waiting for the new Year to begin. We eat twelve grapes, in time with the Rings of the bell of a clock situated in "La Puerta del Sol" (the very centre of Madrid).
    Due to the bad working of this clock, there was a couplet that became very popular in the old days. It says like this: A Spanish man asked a Turkish: "That bloody clock in la Puerta del Sol, why does it work so badly?"
    And in a carefree way, the Turkish being a sly old fox answered him: "That clock is the mirror of the government that is underneath".
    A lot of people join together below the clock to have the grapes there, but we have them at home with our relatives, because the roads are very crowded on that night and it can be dangerous as people drink a lot.
This Spanish tradition of having the grapes on that night was invented by the Spanish wine harvesters because there was a surplus of grapes.
    Here we have other traditions that help our wishes to be fulfilled: We put a gold ring into a glass of sparkling wine, we also wear red knickers and write three wishes on a piece of paper, we put it inside our shoes and we step on it while hearing the rings of a bell, afterwards this piece of paper is burnt out.
    After all this, we drink a toast with a Spanish sparkling wine or champagne and we have it with marzipan, nougat and other sweet things.
     Once everything has finished, we put on our best clothes to go out to a party called "cotill�n" where we dance and have fun wearing cardboard caps and having whistles and confetti.
    There are two things we don't like on these days, and that is that we spend a lot of money on unnecessary and expensive things.

    The other thing we hate is that people, especially teenagers, drink too much. 
   At Christmas everybody likes working or helping with different charity organizations, but they forget it the rest of the year.

New Year in Ukraine, by Elena Trachenko

    In my country we celebrate New Year on the 31st of December. It's the time of special meals, presents, relatives and friends.
    We spend the whole day cooking and at night we have a big dinner. Afterwards we go out for a walk or we sit at home.
I like being with my friends. After 12 o'clock we open our presents and we dance around the New Year's tree. When the morning comes everybody goes to sleep.
    We don't celebrate the first of January as Spanish do, but it's a bank holiday and nobody goes to work.