One of the most common choices for New Year’s dinner is raclette. Each round lentil is seen as a symbol of a coin, and the soup’s consumption a tradition meant to open the doors to wealth in the new year. In some regions, the traditional Silvester lunch is lentil soup. In the spirit of bringing luck to the new year, lucky charms in the form of pigs, clover, ladybugs, and horseshoes are sometimes exchanged between friends. Other New Year’s Eve traditions include using a pendulum to answer yes-or-no questions or opening the Bible to a random page in order to predict the future. Read a list of the shapes' meanings here. The molten metal is then poured into a cup of cold water, and the resulting shape is then said to tell you something about the year ahead. A small metal figure is placed on a spoon and melted over a candle.
Bleigiessen (or pouring lead) is a favorite, and you can buy a Bleigiessen set in many stores during the month of December. Some of the holiday’s quieter traditions surround predictions for the upcoming year. On January 1st, the streets are awash with the red paper detritus that most fireworks leave behind-and the city is left with a large cleaning bill. Instead it’s every German for him or herself, and being in a German city at midnight on New Year’s Eve can feel like being in the middle of a war zone as the entire population takes to the streets to denote them. Unlike the United States, most fireworks are legal in Germany, and there are very few public fireworks displays-though the largest and most famous takes place at Berlin's Brandenburg Gate. After Christmas, fireworks begin to appear for sale in German shops and supermarkets. Making a lot of noise was an important part of these ancient year-end traditions, and it is likely that the fireworks set off in multitudes on New Year’s Eve today are the modern evolution of that tradition. Despite the shared date, most German Silvester traditions actually stem from a far older pagan celebration called Rauhnächte. When the Gregorian calendar was reformed in 1582, the last day of the year was placed on December 31st, combining Silvester’s feast day with what we now call New Year’s Eve. Sylvester-that is to say, his burial ceremony-took place on December 31, 335. One, sown in a forged account called “Donation of Constantine,” claimed that he had been miraculously cured of leprosy. Besides the fact that he served as pope from 314 to 335, very little is known about Sylvester, though several legends have sprung up around his name. The name Silvester comes from a 4th century Roman saint: Pope Silvester I (also spelled Sylvester).
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