As we’re counting down the final hours of 2025, we’re likely to carry out our New Year’s traditions — and there is no shortage of options to choose from as we decide how we want to start 2026.

Resolutions will be written, special foods will be eaten, countdowns will be shouted and celebrations will ring out across Butler County.

There are traditions from around the world believed to bring good luck into a new year and, really, who couldn’t use a little more luck?

Eating 12 grapes at midnight — and making a wish while eating each one for each month of 2026 — is a Spanish tradition to bring luck because grapes symbolize abundance. Eating black-eyed peas, which symbolize coins, paired with greens, for paper money, and cornbread, representing gold, is a tradition rooted in southern culture and African American history.

Pork is a popular food for New Year’s Day because pigs root forward, symbolizing moving ahead unlike chickens, which scratch backward. In Pennsylvania Dutch culture, pork is often paired with sauerkraut, which represents wealth and a long life.

In Greece, those hoping for good fortune in the new year might smash a pomegranate on their doorsteps as the many seeds of the fruit represent wishes for many joys. In South Africa, they blow cinnamon from outside, over their thresholds and into their homes for good fortune while envisioning prosperity and success.

If you want to drive away bad spirits, bang pots and pans or set off a firework at midnight or sweep old dust out of the house through the back door before midnight. Some superstitions say to clean and declutter homes before midnight to get rid of any bad luck hanging around and then stop cleaning until at least Jan. 2 to prevent accidentally sweeping out the new year’s good luck. Native Americans traditionally cleanse a space by burning sage and inviting new energy into their homes.

If you want to travel in 2026, walk around your block with an empty suitcase at midnight as part of a Latin American tradition that claims the action will guarantee a year filled with new experiences. If you want romance in 2026, superstition calls for a kiss at midnight to start things off right or to sleep with a sprig of mistletoe under your pillow.

Brazilians looking for peace in the new year wear white on New Year’s Eve to invite purification and calm. In Poland, setting an early alarm for New Year’s Day is said to set the tone for waking up easily and early the whole year through.

Whatever your hopes for 2026, there’s a good chance you can find a New Year’s tradition that will claim to help you achieve it.

There is a little more to it than superstition, as the Cleveland Clinic has shared research from psychotherapist Natacha Duke that shows setting clear intentions that help us identify what’s important to us can benefit all of us in myriad ways. It can help us provide a framework for personal growth, reduce stress and anxiety, encourage self-compassion and promote a proactive mindset.

However you choose to ring in the new year, the Butler Eagle hopes you’ll do it safely and happily, and we’ll be here to tell the stories of how everything plays out in 2026.

— KL