Friday, January 02, 2009

Tradition: Twelve grapes

This year I was asked why the tradition of the twelve grapes, so I decided to search information about it to know also myself, such a shame :P So I went to wikipedia and this is what I found:

The Twelve Grapes (Sp. Las doce uvas de la suerte, "The twelve grapes of luck") is a Spanish tradition since 1909. In December of that year, some alicantese vine growers came up with it to better sell huge amounts of grapes from an excellent harvest.

The tradition consists in eating a grape with each bell strike at midnight of December 31. According to the tradition, that leads to a year of prosperity. Each grape is eaten with each beat of the bell. After the 12th strike everyone should have eaten all their 12 grapes, although this seldom happens due to its difficulty.

The twelve grapes are linked to the Puerta del Sol tower clock, where this tradition started and from where the change of year is always broadcast.

This tradition was adopted also by places with a broad cultural relation with Spain such as Mexico, Hispanic communities in United States, other Latin American countries and as far as the Philippines.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wikipedia is the knowledge source :P

Sleepwalker said...

Someone told me that story two or three years ago, but I didn't know if it was really true... so it is!
I can never finish the twelve grapes with the bell -_-

Post a Comment