 |
| Before New Year's - Mocambo -Veracruz - 1967 |
Esta tradición tuvo su origen en España, aunque con el tiempo se haya difundido a otros países como Portugal o Latinoamérica. Pero, ¿cómo exactamente surgió la idea de comer uvas en Nochevieja?
This tradition of eating 12 grapes on New Year’s Eve began in Spain. Since then the custom has spread to Portugal and Latin America.
¿Por qué tomamos 12 uvas en Nochevieja?
Hay varias teorías sobre cómo comenzó esta tradición. Una de ellas señala que todo comenzó en la Nochevieja de 1909, cuando la gente empezó a comer una gran cantidad de uvas. En realidad, se dice que ese año hubo una cosecha excepcional de uvas, lo que llevó a los productores a comercializarlas como «uvas de la suerte» para aumentar su venta. Fue entonces cuando surgió la idea de comer 12 uvas a medianoche, una por cada mes del año.
Why do we do this? There are many but one of them states that it all began in the 1909 New Year’s Eve. Apparently there was a good crop of grapes. Growers then advertised them as the good luck grapes.
For Rosemary and me the celebration of New Year’s Eve involved
a party when we were young. Strangers would greet you and hug you. As
Rosemary and I got older we would celebrate it at home and we would follow the
ritual of the 12 grapes that I was taught by my grandmother. It was always
important and Rosemary would invariably remind me to buy grapes. As soon as our mantle clock began to strike at midnight we would eat our grapes. Unromantic folks we knew in Mexico preferred to drink their 12 grapes as a glass of wine.
We had another fond memory that after our first Christmas together in 1967 (we were not yet married), we were visiting my mother in Veracruz. I remember the lovely evenings of walking with Rosemary, hand in hand on the seaside boulevard (a malecón in Spanish), and in the port's humid heat, the smell of bunker oil and the sea would waft past us and made those walks romantic to an extreme.
Also in my memory with my mother at midnight, the ships would all sound their sirens. There is something about their lovely sound now, that makes me feel sad about not having Rosemary around to share them.
Something I must decide in solitude is if I will eat 12 grapes or 24?
