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Traditions
by Darlene Campos New Year’s Eve in my family varies from year to year but one thing that remains constant is the grapes. Some years we spent the holiday with Dad’s family. He comes from a family of ten siblings, so there was barely any room to sit down. Dad’s relatives were still grounded in old traditions which didn’t make sense anymore. If a woman in the family was pregnant on New Year’s Eve, Grandma Ruth would tell her to bundle up extra tightly because one gust of wind to her back would cause an instant miscarriage. At ten years old, I thought this idea was ridiculous. And then the grapes came out along with the champagne. It’s a tradition in Ecuadorian households to eat 12 grapes just before the New Year arrives. Each grape is said to cause good luck for each upcoming month. Around 11:30 at night, the whole Campos family scurried to grab their bowl of grapes and ate them hastily. Mom and I were the only ones who didn’t bother with it. Dad questioned why she didn’t, though at this time, they had been married for over 20 years and Mom never followed the grape tradition. I don’t know why he expected her to suddenly change. “Because they’re going to come out as waste,” Mom said to him. “This is the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen. You’re a doctor, you should know better.” Mom loves her heritage and taught me to love it as well, but she never taught me any Ecuadorian traditions. She was raised Catholic but stopped going to mass as a teenager. She said she got tired of memorizing the names of saints. When she got engaged to Dad, she had been married before, so technically, by Ecuadorian traditions, she was no longer a virgin. Dad’s family told her there would be severe consequences if she showed up to the wedding in a white dress. White, they said, was only for pure women. Mom didn’t want any trouble and she bought a peach colored dress. Dad soon returned it for a white one, which Mom wore at the wedding. There haven’t been any dire consequences yet. To make sure I had good luck in the New Year, Grandma Ruth passed a bowl of grapes to me. Grapes are among my favorite fruits, so I ate them and then I asked for more because they were sweet with a hint of sour, just the way I liked. “No,” Grandma Ruth said. “You only eat 12.” “Why?” I asked, confused. Mom sighed, grabbed another grape filled bowl, and gave it to me. I ate the grapes happily, but I still wanted more. “If you keep eating all the grapes, you’ll spoil the family’s luck for the New Year,” Grandma Ruth said. “When something bad happens to this family, I know it will be because of you not sharing the grapes.” I honestly don’t remember if bad luck happened the following year. I’m sure it was the same as any year with good and bad fortunes all throughout. In fact, just this year, I got a good raise at work but Mom lost her job. She went on government assistance for the second time in her life until she found a better paying job three months later. You can’t gain good fortune without a little bit of bad fortune. An Ecuadorian tradition I’ve never experienced with my own eyes is Año Viejo. Año Viejo consists of burning effigies of people or characters that were popular in the past year. Though most of my family has immigrated to the United States, I still have a couple of relatives who have never left Ecuador. They attend the Año Viejo festivities every year and take pictures for me. Past effigies have included Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, the Incredibles, Bart Simpson, and Shrek. Legend has it that Año Viejo began during the 1895 Yellow Fever Epidemic in Guayaquil. The epidemic hit right before New Year’s Eve and many families burned the bodies of their loved ones to obliterate the germs from passing on to others. Even though I haven’t witnessed Año Viejo, I like the idea of it. Effigies are filled with gunpowder and set aflame. Some attendees actually jump over the flames 12 times for good luck. It is said that the flames cleanse the bad fortune of the previous year. The difference between people and effigies is that you can’t burn people to clean them. Grape eating continued year after year. Each time, I was older and I still asked for more grapes to satisfy my sweet tooth. When I was 21, I spent New Year’s Eve with Mom’s family – the Martinez side. Unlike the Campos relatives, the Martinez family is relatively small and generally doesn’t follow traditions. However, the Martinez family, like the Campos family, is made up of proud Ecuadorian people. My Aunt Katy’s house, Mom’s older sister, has always been plastered with the Ecuadorian flag and other symbols such as figures of Galapagos tortoises, pictures of indigenous tribes, and rondadors. The grapes appeared on the table shortly before midnight. Everyone reached out to grab their little plastic cup of champagne and started counting 12 grapes in their palms. Mom didn’t touch any of the grapes. She sat at the head of the table, drinking nonalcoholic cider. When asked why she wasn’t having her share of the grapes, she said, “I don’t believe in it.” Of course, she was reminded it’s a tradition. She didn’t care. “We don’t even know why the grapes are a tradition,” Mom said, which is true. I’ve noticed most traditions are only done because they’ve been done for a long time. The origins of most traditions remain unknown. There must have been an Ecuadorian ancestor who decided to eat grapes for the hell of it on New Year’s Eve and all of his or her relatives followed suit because they were hungry or bored. When I was 22, Mom volunteered to have New Year’s Eve held at her house for the first time in family history. For as long as I can remember, Mom refused to have holidays held at her house because it meant she would have to “dust and vacuum.” I helped out with the cleaning while Mom cooked vegetable lasagna. The traditional New Year’s Eve meal in my family has always been ham until Mom and I decided to stop eating pork after reading Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle. I reminded Mom that our family probably wouldn’t appreciate eating veggies for dinner. “If they don’t like it, they can choke on their grapes,” she said and continued stirring the marinara sauce at the stove. Just before midnight, my relatives asked where the grapes were. Mom admitted she didn’t buy any. Everyone looked at her in total shock. Then when the vegetable lasagna was served, their shock grew even larger. First no grapes and now no ham – Mom was obviously an Ecuadorian imposter. The New Year didn’t take too long to come upon us and for the first time, no one in the family ate a grape. None of us have spontaneously combusted or been eaten by tigers, so I would say living without the grapes didn’t turn out to be so bad. After the ball drop on television, we all checked in with our relatives in Ecuador who were just starting to burn the effigies. We could hear the brutal shouts of the crowds on our cell phones. “Burn it!” they screamed. “Burn it all to ashes!” |
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