“You must eat 12 grapes at 12 under the table,” a very handsome Hispanic young adult told my teenager on New Year’s Eve. The teens and the young adults had occupied the dining room and monopolized the big bag of green grapes. Their infectious enthusiasm around this superstition reached us adults — most on the verge of retirement — and we scrambled for our own stash.
Balancing the bubbly and the bowl, we did the countdown and stuffed our faces with grapes. We ditched crouching under the table, mercifully retaining our dignity. The giant American grapes made it almost painful to swallow one piece per five seconds. I couldn’t do more than five or six. The teen was thrilled at having accomplished the ritual correctly (and wisely, by choosing the smallest grapes from the pack).
Did I screw up my year by being stupid in its very first minute? What if the grapes were really supposed to do the trick? What if my inadequacy around the ritual now brings misfortune to my loved ones? I would be lying if I claimed the aforementioned thoughts didn’t cross my mind as we walked back home that snow-stormy night.
The arrival of the New Year has long been accompanied by a dense array of superstitions, ranging from the consumption of symbolic foods to prohibitions against particular actions believed to influence fortune. While often dismissed as irrational residues of premodern thought, superstitions endure across cultures and historical periods. Their persistence suggests that superstition functions not merely as belief in the supernatural but as a meaningful response to temporal transition, uncertainty, and collective identity. Émile Durkheim argued that ritual practices reinforce social cohesion by making collective values visible and repeatable.
Superstitions emerge as structured practices that help individuals and societies negotiate the anxiety of beginnings. Is it any wonder, then, that some of the most widely accepted (even by non-believers) superstitions are around weddings, pregnancies, and acquisitions of assets? Don’t talk about your pregnancy till it shows to avoid the evil eye. Don’t get married under an inauspicious moon. Don’t look at the bride before you marry her. Don’t make the facade of the house “perfect”. Don’t drive a new car without adorning it with a totem, preferably the lemon-chili one.
As Bronisław Malinowski observed in his studies of the Trobriand Islanders, superstition intensifies in situations of risk where technical knowledge is insufficient. These situations, where the old hasn’t fully given way to the new, operate within what Victor Turner described as liminality: A threshold state in which normal structures are suspended, and the future is undetermined. These moments of existential risk invite practices that promise continuity and control. Superstition offers a way to act upon the future symbolically when rational control is limited.
Sigmund Freud viewed superstition as an expression of unconscious desires and anxieties, particularly those related to control and wish fulfillment. Research by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky on biases demonstrates that humans routinely infer causality where none exists, particularly in emotionally charged contexts. The illusion of control — the belief that one can influence outcomes through unrelated actions — is especially pronounced during periods of uncertainty.
But maybe it’s these moments of uncertainty, those inexplicable freak accidents, and everything in between, that test our commitment to rationality and reason. It’s the times that get tough in which our strength as evolved human beings needs to be summoned to dispel the darkness of superstitions.
Road accidents happen because of drivers and their machines, and not because of misaligned stars. Family members act “crazy” because of psychiatric disorders, and not Devi or the Devil’s possession.
Marriages break for a million reasons; a widow’s presence at the wedding is not one of them.
Superstitions, and post facto explanations for unfortunate events, merely fulfill emotional and social needs unmet by rational calculation alone.
Yes, eating the grapes amid the messy and muffled cheers of Happy New Year is fun, but the months ahead are going to be happy or otherwise with no help from those humble green spheres.
Nishtha Gautam is an academician and author. The views expressed are personal
