Filipino traditions during New Year’s eve

Gulf News

How do Filipinos ring in the new year? We ask Filipino expatriates in Dubai about the special things they do to celebrate the occasion

Transcript

00:00I always do wearing polka dots and jumping because they told me it helps me

00:07increase my height. So I still jump in the midnight yeah. This is what I do every year.

00:14I used to gather fruits like 12 no 13 kinds of circled fruits like

00:22watermelon anything anything circle and then I put them together in one

00:27container and then one of the things is that I put coins in my in my pocket and

00:31shake them that's at 12 o'clock shake them shake them so that as far as I know

00:38it brings good luck to my pocket more money inside. Before you enter the house

00:44you just have to pass the coins there and put some coins at the four sides of

00:50the house. We prepare fruits in our home during New Year. We wear polka dots.

00:55Normally we prepared bibingka as a delicacy during New Year's Eve because

01:01we believe that when you eat bibingka during the New Year's Eve it will make

01:06the family tight more tighter it becomes more closer I collect coins and then

01:12during the New Year's Eve I shake it at the middle of the night 12 o'clock

01:16midnight then I believe that because of that we become more prosperous. We have

01:22lots of Filipino traditional practices like 13 fruits round fruits we are

01:27always doing that. Some of the people are especially a small one they're making

01:31jam because they believe that they will be taller on that on the next year or

01:37whatsoever and also we have a fireworks or firecrackers every midnight throw it

01:44away the bad spirits and evils or something. There's so many things that we

01:49believe every new year that we have to avoid so like on our family with our

01:53family we're not allowed to have like chicken dish during New Year and then we

01:59have to wear polka dots clothing we have to put put coins on our pockets and to

02:04those who are not blessed with height you have to jump so that's the little

02:09part but as a family we're doing it 14 fruits it should be round fruits so that

02:15you will be blessed the whole year round for us is 14 because when they say 13

02:19it's bad luck so you have it's 14 because they said there should be an

02:23extra like bonus so we collect 14 round fruits every new year. We believe in this

02:29tradition because we are really fond of I think wishes and everything Filipinos

02:35are full of hope and we are always happy so we always want to achieve better and

02:40the best in our lives. I think Filipinos are very superstitious when it comes to

02:45to these kinds of things I think it's already part of our culture. We've been colonized by the other countries just like the

02:51Spanish and more of like just like Chinese. In the Philippines, we just like more on Chinese beliefs than the Filipino beliefs.

03:02In the Philippines, we are colonized by different races like Spaniards, Chinese and Japanese like that so

03:09different cultures influence us a lot like for the Chinese we use

03:15different fireworks we eat noodles during the New Year's Eve and for the

03:20Spanish we become more luxurious in preparing food. There's a lot of Filipino

03:25traditions that we are usually using or usually doing I mean every year or every

03:31end of the year especially midnight of the new year because Filipinos are

03:36always have their beliefs of blessings, prosperity and of course good health.

03:43Our family are really fond of believing on that something that there's still a good thing

03:49that will happen to us so even these are like a belief but we there's no

03:56there's no problem if we're going to follow it. If we do this then nothing

04:00will happen to us so if we do this maybe if it's really a good luck then we will

04:05receive good luck.

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