New Year’s Traditions and Superstitions

Histories and Mysteries

With a New Year right on the horizon, we hope to conjure up the luckiest, healthiest, most prosperous one ever!  Fortunately, there are plenty of superstitions to help us along the way. If you’d like to know more about the weird stuff people all over the world do, read on!

Want to get rich in the coming new year? Try eating some pickled herring at midnight on New Year’s Eve. This practice comes from Poland, Germany and Scandinavia. It is believed that the silver color of the fish, representing real silver, will help you acquire money.

Speaking of silver, another Slavic tradition holds that if you wash your hands with a piece of silver on New Year’s Day, you will be prosperous for the year to come. You can also fill the sink with coins and water, then wash your face with the coin saturated mix.

In Romania, it was…

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Winter Solstice Blessings

The longest night when light returns

The candles flicker, spirits yearn

Crisp moon, ice breath and silver stars

That shine through light years from afar

On this dark night all things renew

But visions eclipse, none in view

The winter’s lessons, hard and bleak

Are only for the strong to seek.

Anne Rice, Mother of Vampires

Anne Rice, the Mother of Vampires, Dark Queen of modern Gothic literature, has left this earthly realm. My favorite living author is no longer living. Here is a piece I wrote a few years ago, thought I’d reblog it in honor of her.

RIP (wRite In Peace) Sweet Queen.

Histories and Mysteries

She is the mistress of the macabre, the weaver of witch tales, a native New Orleanian who may never have made her mark in the world if it weren’t for her near blood thirsty curiosity about what it would be like to interview a vampire.

We are only twenty seven days away from Halloween, and no countdown would be complete without a tribute to Anne Rice, my all-time favorite living author!

Luckily, today happens to be her birthday.  (I’m sure it is no coincidence that this woman came into the world so near to Halloween.)

Anne Rice was born on October 4, 1941 in New Orleans, Louisiana. She was the second of four daughters. Her parents, Howard and Katherine O’Brien, were of Irish Catholic descent. The family lived in the hard-scrabble, impoverished section of town known as the Irish Channel, where they rented a 3-room shotgun house. Most of Anne’s…

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