With the exception of Carnival, New Year’s Eve is the biggest party on Brazil’s calendar. The country’s more than 5,500 cities each have their own public celebrations — some more famous than others! — and that’s not even counting family gatherings and private parties going on all over Brazil.
And, as is par for the course for Brazilian cultural celebrations, New Year’s Eve is made up of a mix of traditions: American, African, Asian, European, religious, and secular. All of them come together to form what is always a special night in this very special country.
For starters, the party on December 31 lasting until January 1, already carries a French influence in its name — known as Réveillon in Brazil, a nod to French aristocratic parties that ran through the night until the next morning.
The most famous of all Réveillon parties takes place on Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro, the former capital of Brazil. The so-called “Show da Virada” (The Show at the Turn of the Year) typically counts its attendance figures in the millions of people. The 2023 edition featured three major stages with concerts from blockbuster Brazilian artists, as well as a 12-minute fireworks display at midnight.
Cherry-picking culinary traditions
For many Brazilians, the food you eat on New Year’s Eve can influence the year to come, and many of these dinner table superstitions are inherited from waves of immigration from all over the world.
From Italy, for instance, comes the lentils. There’s a belief in Italian families that consuming these pulses on New Year’s Eve brings good luck, health, and prosperity. Some say the correct dose is 12 lentils at the strike of midnight, others say seven spoons.
Bay leaves have been around since ancient times and represent immortality. The superstition here involves writing your name on a bay leaf (preferably not a dried one…) and keeping it in your wallet for the whole year. Then, on New Year’s Eve, you swap it out for a fresh one.
Clothing choices
If you’re planning on spending New Year’s Eve in Brazil with any group of people, at parties large or small, you must make sure to pack some white clothes. Almost all partygoers you encounter — even in private family Réveillon gatherings — will be dressed in white to some extent, be that a white t-shirt or a full head-to-toe all-white outfit.
But while this tradition is so common and widespread among Brazilians, very few know why they do it in Brazil — or that it is essentially unique to the country.
The wearing of white on New Year’s Eve takes from Afro-Brazilian religions Candomblé and Umbanda, followers of which would hold ceremonies on December 31 to honor the deity Yemanjá, the goddess of water and creation. Due to her intrinsic connection to rivers and seas, these all-white rituals would often take place at the beach, and the wearing of white clothing soon caught on across Brazil.
There are other important Réveillon clothing choices that are often less… visible. In fact, for many Brazilians, their choice of underwear on New Year’s Eve is the most important decision of the entire event.
As the superstition goes, the color of your underwear on the evening of December 31 can dictate how your life will go for the 12 months that follow. There are some disagreements about what each color represents, but in general terms: white attracts peace, blue is harmony, yellow means wealth, orange attracts creativity, red is passion, and pink is love. Choose wisely.
Offerings to Yemanjá and the seven waves
The Afro-Brazilian religious influence on New Year’s Eve is certainly not limited to wearing white clothes. If you are planning to spend Réveillon at a beach in Brazil, prepare to get your whites wet because these traditions require some time in the water.
As modern New Year’s Eve is linked to the Candomblé and Umbanda deity of Yemanjá, devotees (and many non-religious folk as well) are often seen throwing items into the sea as tribute — typically, flowers, but also mirrors, messages in bottles, and miniature boats. These are offerings to Yemanjá, by which the giver makes a wish before casting their gift into the waves. But keep an eye out, because if the sea brings your object back, your wish might not come true.
At midnight, the ritual is to jump the waves — seven of them to be precise. The number is very important to both Candomblé and Umbanda, representing the seven divine spirits Oxalá, Oxum, Oxóssi, Xangô, Ogum, Obaluaiê, and Yemanjá. Each jump represents a request to each deity.
The Yemanjá contradiction
Several of Brazil’s aforementioned New Year’s Eve traditions are linked to the Afro-Brazilian religions of Candomblé and Umbanda, particularly their shared deity Yemanjá. These are syncretized religions, amalgamating the traditional West African beliefs of Brazil’s slave population with the Roman Catholicism of Portuguese colonists — and, in the case of Umbanda, mid-19th century Kardecism.
In Candomblé and Umbanda, each divine spirit — or orixá — equates to a Roman Catholic saint, in what is often believed to have been a strategy to allow worshippers to continue practicing their beliefs in a European-centric and overwhelmingly Catholic society. Ogum, the warrior spirit, is depicted as Saint George or Saint Anthony; Xango, the orixá of justice, is Saint Jerome, and Yemanjá, the deity of the sea, is syncretized with Our Lady of Navigators, one of the many titles given to the Virgin Mary.
But while Candomblé and Umbanda have made important contributions to Brazilian language and culture — as the devotion to Yemanjá at New Year’s Eve shows — practitioners of these Afro-Brazilian traditions are among those who most suffer from religious persecution in Brazil.
Every week, the country sees reports of places of Candomblé and Umbanda worship being vandalized or attacked, incidents fueled by the belief of some factions of evangelical Protestantism in the country that these Afro-Brazilian religions are satanic. According to figures from the Institute of Applied Economic Research (Ipea), official places of worship for Pentecostal or neo-Pentecostal evangelical denominations quadrupled between 2001 and 2021.
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