Tutorial Transcript

Hello everyone and welcome back to my channel! Or, welcome! In today's video I would like to tell you about five traditions of the New Year in Italy. The word "Capodanno" means "beginning of the year", it is in fact a word composed of "head/start" and "year". It is celebrated by waiting for midnight on the evening of December 31st (San Silvestro), and then the celebrations continue in the early hours of January 1st. It is also common to organize a lunch on January 1st with friends and / or relatives. The traditions I will talk about in this video are real propitiatory customs, which more or less everyone follows, in preparation for the new year: 1. Wear red underwear, because red is an auspicious color. The custom of wearing a red garment is thought to derive from Ancient Rome, at the time of Octavian Augustus, when on the occasion of the New Year (March 1st) a red cloth was worn to symbolize power, health and fertility. Already after Christmas you notice that all the lingerie shops are full of red underwear and pajamas! 2. Make a toast on the stroke of midnight. After the countdown with the bottle in hand ready to be uncorked, we congratulate each other and toast to a better year than the previous one! The most common thing is to toast with a sparkling wine (spumante). When the bottle is uncorked, the diners applaud. It is said that whoever is hit by the cork of the bottle will get married soon or that in any case they are the luckiest of the table. If you spill some sparkling wine on the tablecloth, you get your finger wet and go behind your ears for good luck. 3. Eat lentils and cotechino (also called "zampone"), both good luck foods, which symbolize wealth and well-being. There are those who choose them as the main course for the dinner on December 31st, while there are those who serve them right at the stroke of midnight, after dinner. 4. Throw out something old. In the past this was taken literally, old things were thrown out of the window. Today it is done symbolically, using the garbage can. 5. Make fireworks, or more commonly called "botti" (bangs). Launching fireworks is not a practice that I like very much, because they are really annoying and sometimes harmful to animals. In fact, I don't, but to follow the tradition, we take stars or sparks, which you can easily do even on the balcony or looking out the window. Usually the municipalities of the cities organize events on the occasion of the New Year, very often concerts, which are also broadcast live on TV. In Rome, for example, the New Year's Eve concert is always organized at the Colosseum. Surely there will be other traditions that I do not know, because Italy is varied and each region, each province, each municipality has its own traditions, which are particular and specific to certain places! These I have just talked about are the most widespread nationally and that we all more or less follow in every part of Italy. Let me know in the comments what you are doing to celebrate the New Year in your country! I wish you a very happy New Year, in the hope that it is really better than this one that is about to end! Thank you so much for watching this video, see you in the next one. See you soon bye!

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