NEW YEAR in Slovakia

Have you decided to go to Slovakia on your Erasmus? And you cannot even spot it on the map, right? But you are desperately trying to gather as much information as possible about this unexplored but beautiful country before your arrival. Let us help you with this article about various traditions people used to stick to in the past. Are you ready?

New Year’s Traditions

Everyone has them. New Year is a time for us to reflect on what went well, what we messed up, what we could have done better. It is also about setting up new goals, called New Year’s Resolutions. This is something that almost every country has in common, but still there are traditions that make us different. Do you want to know more about ours? Keep reading.

What do you eat for lunch on New Year? In the past, people in Slovakia used to eat lentil soup because a lot of lentils mean wealth in the upcoming year. In a different part of Slovakia, they preferred to replace lentil soup with sweet poppy dish. However, the main dish should consist of meat. But no poultry nor fish, please! If you eat poultry for lunch, your luck is going to fly away from your house. The same with fish, it will swim away. So please, feel free to go with pork. Because your happy pig is going to stay in a pigsty, close to you and your house all year long.

Do you feel like cleaning up your house on the New Year? Because they say: “How you meet the New Year is how you will spend it.” If you decide to do so, be careful to sweep only to the corner and never away of it, it could mean bad luck or, in a worse case, the death of someone in the family. A little bit morbid, don´t you think?

If you visit your family or friends on New Year and you are a woman, never go through the door as the first one. It is believed that if a young and healthy man enters the house first, everyone living there will stay healthy during the upcoming year as well. And if you really are about to visit your Slovak friends, do not forget to wish them well in the New Year as people used to do: “Rok nový, spokojný, šťastivý a hojný, na tele, na duši, daj, pane Ježiši.”