It's celebrated, counted down and reflected on in different ways around the world, but with each culture comes varying beliefs and traditions you never knew existed. We hope you enjoy ringing in 2021 with this special New Year's episode of Superstitions every Wednesday step inside stories that illustrate the horror, weirdness and truth behind humanity's strangest codes of conduct. Listen to superstitions free on Spotify over ever. You get your podcasts.

Happy New Year, listeners. We made it.

There's finally less than 24 hours left in the year 2020 if you're just joining us. Welcome. I'm Alistair Murden and this is Superstitions, a Spotify original from podcast. In this podcast, we use short stories to explore the ways in which human beings interact with luck and fate.

In each episode, we peel back the layers of mystery surrounding peculiar rituals, totems and practices. Today's episode is a very special one. See, you may not believe in Santa Claus leprechauns or the Easter Bunny, but New Year's Eve is the one holiday where everyone becomes a little superstitious because the future is uncertain. And New Year's Eve is when we take a moment out of our lives to face that uncertainty head on. According to cultures around the world, what you do on New Year's Eve will determine the trajectory of the next 365 days for good and ill.

So maybe don't relax on this last day of 2020. After all, a whole new year is at stake.

Coming up, we'll see some practices from people around the globe and hope none of them drop the ball.

Time never stops. It never waits, never stands still for anyone. Throughout human history, we've given it a name, a face, a persona, even Cronos, Carla, Bangun, Bangun, the Norns, father time.

But all these days, he's only there to mask the truth. That time is the one thing that will remain forever out of human control when our story starts. Time is running out all over the world.

It was already January 1st in the area known as UTC plus 14, the earliest time zone on planet Earth. But in the Western Hemisphere it was still December thirty. First and all, manner of hustling and bustling was afoot in London.

Beleaguered playwrights Emily Jordan would receive a parcel from her Irish mother containing a single sprig of mistletoe and a note saying, Please put this under your pillow when you go to sleep tonight. Emily knew what this charm was supposed to mean. It was a way to ensure a single woman found romance in the New Year in Atlanta, Georgia. Griffin the hair. Murphy was also rushing out for some last minute groceries. He found himself laying low with a business partner, Darius, who insisted they have collard greens and black eyed peas for dinner.

Who was Griffin to deny a Southern tradition? Farther North, America's central hub for New Years, New York City was teeming with activity.

There, Ruth Altman gathered dozens and dozens of confetti, poppers and blowers of various sizes. She was once told that noise makers would scare off evil spirits, and in her haunted Brooklyn apartment complex, she wouldn't take any chances. At the same time, in midtown Manhattan, a man named Thatcher refused to loan out any money to his friends. He saw on a listicle online that it was bad luck to loan out money on New Year's Eve. It'll only guarantee they'll keep coming back to you for the rest of the year.

Each of these individuals was engaged in a different superstitious ritual, they followed wildly different rules that had originated in different parts of the globe. Yet they all had the same purpose to ensure good fortune of one form or another in the coming year.

What none of these people realized, indeed, what very few people understand is that it wasn't just their personal luck. On the line for New Year's Eve is special.

It's a gateway and time, a moment when all humanity takes a deep breath, then walks hand in hand into the future. And it's in moments like these that anything can happen.

While these men and women were busy shoring up luck for the New Year. One man was simply focused on getting through the day. His name was Calvin Bastar. And at seven thirty in the morning Eastern, he was 200 miles south of Manhattan, having just spent the night on an icy park bench in downtown Baltimore. Calvin wasn't used to waking up in the bitter cold, but circumstances had forced his hand.

A passionate political activist, he had spent so much time in Washington, D.C., over the last year that he'd forgotten to check when his lease expired.

So there he was, sitting in the snow, wrapped tightly in comforters, salvaged from his old apartment with freezing hands. He checked his phone.

Notifications from social media were aplenty. His account was anonymous under the handle Trotsky's ice ax. Under this name, he was both more popular and more incendiary than he could be under his legal name.

But he wasn't looking for social media validation this morning.

Today, he was looking for a text from Grant Halcion, an old college acquaintance and the only person he knew who had an apartment large enough for a couch surfer.

Sure enough, there it was a curt hi, bud. How long do you need to crash? Always down to business. The two young men hadn't talked much since Grant's uncle had given him that internship with Jayati Economics right out of college. Unlike Calvin, he didn't return to Baltimore for altruistic reasons. He returned because Hunt Valley was an easier place for an entrepreneur than its silicon counterpart out West. At least that's what people said. Grant may be a centrist shill, but he was a reliable one.

Kalvin thought for a moment and tactfully replied. Just the night, 9:00 a.m., the relief of hot shower was immense. Calvin swore he could almost feel his skin cracking from the sudden change in temperature. And like all good things, it was over too soon. He stepped out into the living room to find Grant's sprawled in front of the TV. The film playing looked like some old bee movie starring Scott Cushing, the sort of thing they used to watch in their dorm together.

Hearing Calvin enter, Grant looked up. You're going to tell me how you wound up spending the night at Druid Hill. Oh, you know how it is.

A man goes out for a night of drinks. Next thing you know, your lease is expired and you're at the mercy of the elements. Grant laughed and shook his head pityingly. You're lucky security didn't catch you or the police. Calvin's gut tightened.

He'd had enough close calls with police and the last 12 months that he couldn't just laugh off the idea.

Grant's probably had no idea how well acquainted Calvin's eyes were with military grade pepper spray. If his nervousness showed, Grant gave no sign he was up on his feet and heading to the bathroom without pausing, his voice echoed out across the porcelain. You have any plans for the holiday?

Stay in, stay warm and don't get arrested, Calvin thought to himself. But out loud, he replied.

Not really, no. There was a long pause, and then Grant reappeared a roguish grin on his face. Speak of the devil, answer this for me. He tossed his phone to Calvin, who scrambled to catch it. He raised it tentatively to his ear and spoke. Hello, Calvin, is that you?

Oh, it's been ages.

He knew that voice. Shirley McNamara, another of their old friends from college.

In fact, she had been one of his closest friends and almost more before she had dropped out of college and vanished into thin air.

All these memories came flooding back at her greeting, Calvin stammered to catch up. What have you been up to in the last eight years?

Oh, nothing much. Just seeing the world, experiencing life, boring stuff like that in living a desert first kind of adulthood.

You know, there it was the thing that had kept the two of them apart. She had always been more about living her best life while he had spent much of his 20s with his head buried in some cause or another. Hardly an attitude that lent itself to romance.

But what was New Year's Eve for, if not being a little selfish? So surely, what are you up to this evening? Have New Year's plans? Actually, that's just what I was calling Grant about. Billy Diamond is hosting a huge New Year's Eve party in his place in Federal Hill.

You should definitely come and be my plus one plus twos, whatever you should come. Plus, I haven't yet decided who my New Year's kiss is going to be.

Calvin barely had time to stammer and assent before she hung up. Calvin was a romantic at heart. It was what drove him to activism in the first place. But while the life of an activist offered a good share of flings, he often found himself lonely. So when I say that this flirtation from an old crush felt like destiny to Calvin, no, I'm not exaggerating. A kiss at the stroke of midnight, they say, sets the course for a romantic personal life in the upcoming year.

Calvin knew more about it than most since the tradition was popularized by German American immigrants, Calvin's grandparents, both of whom were children of forty eight as Germans who emigrated following the failed revolution of 1848, never let him forget that.

And they'd always said that if you missed your midnight kiss, you might as well have spent the night at home. You would remain alone for the rest of the year. Grant was already speaking as Calvin turned to hand his phone back.

Grazi right. The hottest girl from our class just reappears out of the blue, apparently still single somehow. Sometimes I can't believe my own luck.

Calvin had to stifle a sigh. He never really went in for macho crap like competing over a woman, as if life was a season of The Bachelorette.

But Grant had a way of bringing out that kind of behavior.

Noon, someone was at the door on instinct, Calvin Rose to answer it, but stopped as soon as he got a look through the peephole.

The entire space was filled by a pair of men in black suits. For a moment, he thought they could be evangelists. But the stern expressions and lack of pamphlets quickly dispelled that idea.

It had often been said that Calvin Baxter had a sixth sense for feds. And in this moment, that particular Spidey sense was tingling.

Had his old landlord reported him to the CIA, had someone finally hacked his social media accounts and learned who posted under the name Trotsky's Isaak's, he crept away from the door as quietly as he could.

But almost immediately he clocked Grant making a beeline for the door. There would be no dissuading Grant. Calvin had to hide. The bathroom was too obvious, but so was the enormous bedroom. No time to dress for the weather. He bolted across the living room, through the kitchen and out onto the fire escape. The cold outside was an even greater shock to Calvin. Without his layers of blankets, he huddled by the window and waited, listening as intently as he could.

Muffled voices. Was that his name? He heard? Were they asking if he knew this troublemaker?

Calvin peered back in, hoping to catch a glimpse of the feds, leaving what he saw chilled him even more than the frigid winter air.

Grant was leading the men into the kitchen, chatting jovially with them.

Calvin scrambled away from the window and down the floor to the landing. Beneath, he heard the window above him slide open and then heavy footsteps coming out onto the platform he had been on a moment earlier.

Whoever these men in black were, they would find him and he'd spend the New Year in jail.

Coming up, Calvin makes an unexpected New Year's resolution. Now back to the story around the world.

New Year's Eve parties were beginning. The Russian festival of novae got was already in full swing.

Svetlana Kuzmin, who just celebrated her seventy eighth birthday, had gotten off the phone with her sister, Irina.

She'd wanted to be put in touch with her American granddaughter, Penny, but no luck, one of many small disappointments on an otherwise delightful holiday.

Meanwhile, back in America, a young political activist was trying his best not to get caught by mysterious men in suits. Twelve thirty four PM Calvin Baxter was trapped, huddled at the bottom of a fire escape, waiting for the agents to realize he couldn't have gone far.

He pressed up against the window pane behind him and felt a strange tapping at his back.

He looked over his shoulder. The window looked into a modestly sized bathroom. In it stood a young woman in a bathrobe.

She stared out at him, a toothbrush, frozen mid scrub. She blinked.

He blinked back, equally confused. Then she cracked open the window. Where's the fire? She asked.

I'm nowhere. I'm just. It's a very long story. Can you let me inside for just a minute? No. OK, fair. I'm a strange, underdressed man at your window. I've skeptical too. I just need. He looked back up the fire escape and mentally said a prayer. Ten minutes then you'll never see me again. You can lock the door if you want.

This woman, who was only a year older than our dear Mr. Baxter, was reasonably wary of any man who appeared at her window in the middle of the day.

But something about Calvin reassured her it could be that the scrawny man didn't look like he posed a threat to anyone. Or it could have been that he just looks so bloody cold and she felt like being charitable.

Whatever the case, she unbolted the window, swept out of the bathroom and locked the door behind her, giving Calvin a nice private chamber to escape into. Calvin Klein in and breathed a sigh of relief, he finally could relax.

The bathroom was warm and thick with post shower humidity.

After shutting the window behind himself, he strode over to the door and cleared his throat to speak to her through the wall.

Thank you, random woman.

You have no idea how much I needed that rescue, her muffled voice answered from the other side. Oh, it was a rescue, was it?

I didn't think any of my neighbors were wanted fugitives.

Like I said, it's a long story. But you have one grateful damsel over here.

His eyes fell to a laundry basket to the side.

Did you mean to leave your underwear in here? He heard her curse from the hallway. Then she snapped. Don't even think about it.

I wasn't thinking about whatever you think I'm thinking about. I'm on the other side of the room.

Despite her not being able to see him, Calvin put up both his hands as if to show he had not stolen any of her undergarments.

When he heard nothing from the other side, he continued, If it helps, I'm just going to stay in the corner on my phone until it's safe for me to leave, OK?

Calvin reached for his pocket.

It would be foolish to post on social media about this near Miss, but maybe he could schedule a post for later when the dust has settled and his alter ego could taunt the feds with impunity. His phone wasn't there. He cursed under his breath. He must have left it in Grant's apartment, where either he or the feds could easily pick it up. He checked his watch. It had been ten minutes.

Hopefully enough time for the feds to have realized Grant was as clueless as they were.

Calvin could head back now. Hey, you the.

I appreciate the asylum. I'm going to head back upstairs. He made his way to the window and was halfway through it. When he heard the door open behind him, he turned to see his reluctant host holding the door open.

Just go out the front. You don't have to leave through the window like a weirdo.

Calvin paused and considered how he would sound if he told her that he actually preferred going through the window to avoid attention, then decided against it. He smiled at her politely as he passed and tried his best to keep his eyes forward.

As he went for the door, he passed her kitchen and caught a brief glimpse of twelve green grapes on a plate, but wisely didn't comment on it. He cracked the door open and peered through coast clear. He turned around to thank the woman again, but she spoke first.

I swear to God, Damsel, if you thank me one more time, I'm going to vomit.

Just get out of here, OK? Sure. My name is Calvin. It was nice to meet you. The door slammed. OK, Calvin thought I could have been a little less weird there for thirty pm. Calvin was safely back in Grant's apartment. Grant had told him that the men who visited were just some guys from water and power. Calvin had tried to calm his nerves by texting his old college crush about the upcoming party. In about an hour, he'd received five texts from Shirley and sent nine.

Not a favorable ratio, but he held onto hope. In each of her delayed responses, he could detect a glimmer of the fire they had in college. He told himself to be patient. He would see her at the party. No need to overplay his hands so soon, though he often clocked Grant staring at his own phone with a self-satisfied smile on his face like he was thinking the same thing.

The day went on like this. Calvin made some Trotsky's ice ax posts, texted some friends to find another couch to crash on his text, received few responses.

Everyone, it seemed, was more occupied with their New Year's Eve rituals, like the woman who had given him shelter earlier that day.

Her name was Reba Soto, and she had no plans to go out that night. She had experienced a number of New Year's kisses and not just with men either. But this wasn't the superstition she was putting her faith in this year. She was a fairly practical, minded woman. She worked in accounting, after all. But after the atrocious year she had, she figured it was the time to use every tool she had available, so to speak. She had both a Plan A and a plan B for setting a good precedent.

Twelve green grapes for the stroke of midnight and red underwear to signify romance in the New Year, according to her Spanish and Mexican parents. You didn't need to go out to find luck. It could be found just as easily at home. 8:00 p.m. Kalvin. So. A dark car parked across the street, nearly invisible in the night, it was parked in a red zone, but wasn't moving like the ghost of a car that had been towed ages ago, Calvin said.

Those two men who stopped by earlier. Who were they again? Grant shrugged.

Some IRS people who are looking for the last 10 and I think nine pm Calvin received a concerning message on social media. Normally, he shrugged off any and all ominous threats, but this one was concerning.

It read simply, they know you're at Charm City. The casual use of Baltimore's nickname worried Calvin. Perhaps going to the party might be the best way to remain anonymous for the night, 10:00 p.m..

Over Calvin's objections, Grant called him an Uber to the party in federal Hill.

As they drove past the Dakar, Calvin pulled up the color of his winter coat to hide his face 10 13 p.m..

It didn't take long for Calvin to remember how much he hated big parties. The penthouse apartment was full to bursting with people. There was no dress code in the massive bodies. Calvin saw everything from dinner gowns to skimpy fishnet tops, from black tuxes to Astellas chaps. The level of modesty seemed to be at the discretion of each particular guest. Grant was shameless, ogling every glimpse of feminine skin in sight.

Oh, I love New Year's Eve, he bellowed as he made for the open bar. Calvin breathed a sigh of relief at being rid of his annoying friend. He was going to find Shirley.

If nothing else, it'll be a relief to find a familiar face in the mob. But he could not find her.

After fruitless, searching through every jam packed room of this building, Calvin learned the truth. Shirley had never shown up. As it turned out, Shirley had been swept off her feet by a charming, red headed neighbor who swung by her apartment to return some misdirected mail. Calvin had no way of knowing, and perhaps Shirley didn't either, that in the Scottish celebration of Hogmanay. The first person who enters your home after the stroke of midnight is supposed to set the tone for the New Year.

She wanted another year full of travellin, whirlwind passion, and perhaps she would get just that. But Calvin would never know.

All Calvin knew in the moment was that he was alone in a party full of obnoxious strangers. The future looked like another lonely year for him, famous online radical, devoting all of his time to uphill battles against systems of oppression. An outcast in both his personal and public life, he poured himself a drink. Eleven thirty pm. Time was running out, Calvin sat by the bar listening to a woman named Gloria rant about how she was forced out of a great job when suddenly a familiar sight caught his eye in the crowd.

It didn't seem possible after all the expectations he built up for a free and celebratory evening that the men in suits had managed to follow them.

Here, the square shoulders and black suits were impossible to mistake. Amid the writhing young bodies on the dance floor, Calvin had been so focused on his disappointment he'd forgotten to properly scout for exits. In the worst case scenario, he snatched a discarded wig off a nearby table and a pair of massive glasses shaped like the numbers twenty twenty and slipped through the crowd as nimbly as he could. There had to be some escape.

Eleven forty seven PM Rheba Soto walk down the street toward the Bujji apartment complex. In the end, she hadn't spent New Year's Eve watching the apartment on TV and eating green grapes at midnight. Some friends had pressured her into going out, but as she drew closer to the raucous building, she hesitated.

Maybe this wasn't the way to ring in the New Year, after all.

And then she saw a strange sight out of a third story window, a line of sheets hung towards the sidewalk and at the very end of the sheet, maybe eight feet above the pavement, dangled the man who had introduced himself as Calvin earlier that day. Amazed, she walked over and hovered below the dangling man.

He was wearing an ill fitting wig and stupid glasses, but she was certain it was him.

Do you just have a fetish for hanging out of people's windows? Startled.

Calvin very nearly lost his grip. He swung dangerously before grabbing a hold of a nearby awning and lowering himself down.

Once he had righted himself, he answered, I just commit to my Irish accents. Now, if you'll excuse me.

He began a brisk, yet slightly unsteady walk down the street, curiosity, getting the better of her rebirth followed.

Who are you running from? You wouldn't believe me if I told you. Try me.

So he told her and she didn't believe him, but she kept walking with him all the same. She could tell he wasn't a dangerous, paranoid. Whoever the strange man was, he had a clear sense of right and wrong and his own kind of self-deprecating charm. They walked and talked down the deserted streets, him still clearly agitated and her seeing where the evening went. Eleven fifty nine p.m. they stopped on a street corner.

Warm lights from the apartment buildings touched both their faces, realizing the time Rheba fumbled in her purse and produced a plastic bag of 12 green grapes. What's that about? You eat one for each month of the new year. It's supposed to be on every chime of the bell, but we're not near Bell Tower. So will it be the same if you downed an equivalent amount of white wine?

The color of a grape skin doesn't determine the color of the wine, you know. Oh, well, excuse my lack of breeding.

Rheba cuffed him playfully over the head with her purse, then turned back to her grapes. Muffled voices from the adjacent buildings began the countdown. Five she unzipped the bag for she began rolling the first grate between her fingers.

Three, she caught a look in Calvin's eyes. There was something sad but kind in them to.

She caught a glimpse of a dark car rounding the corner, screw it, she thought one, she kissed him.

I wouldn't want to spoil the moment by saying whether there was any true romance behind this kiss. There was passion, sure. And may be a bit of pity, but no desperation.

By sheer happenstance, this trick that only worked in the movies wound up working for Calvin Baxter that night.

The agents, whoever they were, didn't see their quarry behind Reba's tangle of black hair. Her bag of grapes fell and spilled on the sidewalk, one superstition abandoned in favour of another. At that very moment across the world, New Year's was coming to a close for many, and lucky traditions, it seemed, were doomed to go awry. Emily Jordan was already fast asleep in her London flat. The mistletoe her grandmother sent her lying forgotten on her kitchen counter.

Griffin Murphy, crouched in an alleyway in Atlanta waiting for police to pass his grocery run, had turned sour when someone had recognized him from a previous job. Darius would have to go without his lucky New Year's dinner. As the ball dropped to New York City, Ruth Altman found herself in a bar getting hit on by a dude named Thatcher. He wound up paying for all her drinks, something he would spend the rest of the year doing for disinterested women.

And back in Baltimore, neither Calvin nor Riva realized that their kiss had happened a split second after midnight. So by the rules of the superstition, the kiss shouldn't have counted toward good luck in the New Year, whether by coincidence or fate, these rituals had been botched.

Had these people in their own separate ways sealed their fates for the year to come, we can't really be sure.

But time, after all, is relative. So maybe luck is too.

An 18 63 New York Times report on New Year's festivities gives us one of the earliest modern references to the New Year's kiss in an account of German American festivities.

It reads, As the clocks ring out at the hour of midnight, all this festivity pauses for a moment to listen. And as the last stroke dies into silence, all big and little, old and young, male and female push into each other's arms and hearty kisses go round like rolls of labial musketry with the exclamation Prote Niya hail the New Year.

While today's quarantine's celebrations may be lighter on labial musketry than previous years, perhaps there's no better time to remember why good luck is so key to New Year's Eve. Whether it truly exists or not, believing in good luck is how we fortify ourselves for the future. These practices, therefore, cannot be frivolous. They are how our ancestors prepared themselves to face another year full of trials and challenges.

With luck and besides, a lot of the traditions are just plain fun. Families in Finland used to melt down a tin horseshoe and dunk the molten metal into water. The shape, it assumes, will be an omen for the New Year, for instance, smooth shapes tend to mean good fortune and wealth.

A broken figure tends to mean bad. This practice was discouraged in recent years due to the health risks of smelting lead based metal in your home. People were encouraged to use beeswax instead. So it appears the practice always had bad luck built in, just not in the way its original practitioners intended.

The Russian celebration of novae got encourages people to write down their wishes for the New Year on a piece of paper, burn the paper and then mix it into the champagne they drink for the new year. And my personal favorite, an Ecuadorian tradition, has communities stuffing a scarecrow with newspapers from the preceding year and then setting it on fire.

I mean, come on, who wouldn't want to burn 20-20 in effigy? All these beliefs, no matter how eccentric, speaks to a common thread in the human spirit. Time marches ever forward.

People grow old and die, and life never stops changing, even when we want it to stand still in our happiest moments in its own way. New Year's is the one day we get to freeze time to take a deep breath and hope for the best before plunging back into daily life.

It's where optimism for the future meets nostalgia for the past, or it's a chance to set an impossible bar for yourself with ambitious resolutions.

Thanks again for listening to superstitions. We will be back in the new year. You can find more episodes of Superstitions and all other Spotify originals from podcast for free on Spotify until next time. Be wary of the things you cannot explain. Superstitions is a Spotify original from podcast. It is executive produced by Max Cuddler Sound Design by Nick Johnson with production assistance by Ron Shapiro, Carly Madden and Travis Clark. This episode of Superstitions was written by Robert Team, struggled with writing assistance by Greg Castro and Andrew Kelaher, fact checking by Claire Cronin and research by Adriana Gomez and Mikki Taylor.

I'm Alistair Murden.

Thanks for listening to the special New Year's episode of Superstitions every Wednesday unpack the origins and impacts of our most unusual beliefs and hear the stories of those who dared to defy them. Followed the Spotify original theme park, past superstitions free on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.