Why Do People Associate Eating Grapes on New Year’s Eve With Good Luck?

You’ve done Champagne toasts and countdown kisses, but have you tried eating grapes on New Year’s Eve for good luck? In recent years, the tradition—which involves some iteration of eating exactly 12 grapes as the clock strikes midnight, often while crouched under a table—has become something of a viral sensation. Many TikTok creators even claim that the practice has blessed them with everything from greater fortune to true love.

If the ritual has you scratching your head in wonder, you’re not alone. “Is it so you’ll get engaged?” one Vogue editor asked when the topic recently came up at the office. “Be careful doing that,” another advised. “I heard you can choke.”

In order to get to the bottom of the phenomenon, I consulted some experts. Read on to find out everything you’ve ever wanted to know about the custom of eating grapes on New Year’s.

Why do people eat grapes on New Year’s?

“Eating 12 grapes at midnight supposedly brings good luck for the coming new year—one month of good luck per grape,” says Dr. Daniel Compora, a professor at the University of Toledo who specializes in folklore and popular culture. “They need to be eaten at each stroke of midnight.”

While it’s most common to simply eat the grapes as the clock chimes, there are—as you’ve probably clocked on social media—several ways to participate in the tradition. “Some variations indicate that people need to do this while wearing red undergarments or sitting under a table,” Compora explains. “Another variant suggests that doing so will ensure a person finds love during the coming year.”

Regardless of how it’s done, two rules seem pretty consistent: Each grape represents a wish for the 12 months ahead, and you must finish eating all 12 of the grapes before the clock strikes 12:01, or the wishes won’t come true. “You cannot still be chewing,” Noel Wolf, a cultural expert and language teacher at Babbel, emphasizes.

Where did the tradition come from?

Eating grapes on New Year’s isn’t just something that someone on the internet made up; its roots actually go back at least a hundred years. “This is really a Spanish tradition,” explains Michael A. Di Giovine, Ph.D., a professor of anthropology who focuses on food heritage and holiday traditions in Mediterranean culture at West Chester University. “Many say it originated only in the late 1890s/early 1900s to use up a surplus of grapes. There’s also some evidence in late-19th-century newspapers that high-class people would eat these grapes on New Year’s for lunch. But most Spaniards would say it was in 1909, when merchants from Alicante and Murcia handed out grapes at the Puerta del Sol in Madrid to encourage and create this tradition.”

To that end, while the tradition is also popular in Latin America, it’s a very big deal in Spain. Wolf, who lives in Seville, says that just like how Americans follow the goings-on in Times Square on New Year’s Eve, in Spain, everyone tunes in to the Campanadas en la Puerta de Sol, broadcast live from Madrid, to know when to eat the grapes: “It’s a joyful way to welcome the New Year with optimism and intention.”

Is eating grapes on New Year’s a choking hazard?

According to Giovine, the aforementioned choking hazard is very real—so much so that certain precautions have emerged around the tradition. “Since the late 1960s, television stations would show the bell tower at the Plaza del Sol so that people who were not in Madrid could participate,” he says. “Funny enough, because there are always some injuries, I heard that some bell ringers slow down the chiming to allow for people to consume the grapes more slowly.”