Prosperity: Beyond fruits

Anthropologists are always asked about the origins of cultural practices, and last week I did get ambushed for a radio interview inquiring about the tradition of assembling 12 round fruits on New Year’s Eve, to attract prosperity for the coming year.

I could only offer some conjectures, remembering how busy my mother was every year preparing to observe New Year’s Eve traditions, from the 12 round fruits and coins on window sills for prosperity to jumping up and down to increase height!

I figured the fruits might have been a Chinese practice because the Chinese are always offering food on the family altar on special days. The round part, I suggested, was done only on Christmas Eve and might be the association of roundness with money, coins in particular. For good measure, people also wear polka-dotted clothing on New Year’s Eve, quite funny actually when you think of entire families decked out that way.

A day or two after the interview, I stumbled on a more plausible explanation of the 12 round fruits, and this was a reference in some article, in a foreign newspaper, about the “Spanish 12 grapes of prosperity.”

I did an internet search, and there seems to be a consensus that it was in Spain, more specifically in Madrid, where this “las doce uvas de la suerte” practice started. One article even referred to a newspaper article published in 1882, describing the practice.

Madrid’s city council had banned Christmas street parties and people were enraged, feeling it was the rich trying to deprive the masses of Yuletide cheer. People gathered at Madrid’s central square and ate grapes to parody the rich and their celebrations. Somehow, consuming the grapes became more specific, people waiting for the clock to strike at midnight and, with each chime to finish 12 grapes, each one representing a month in the coming year.

Several of the articles I found actually mentioned that the tradition spread to other parts of the world, mainly in Latin American countries and the Philippines. Apparently, Hispanics in the US also adopted the practice.

I have never met anyone in the Philippines who does the 12 grapes gig, but it certainly seems more practical than looking for 12 round fruits to consume on New Year’s Eve. Maybe it’s a hybrid Spanish and Chinese practice that evolved.

I’ve never been big on these practices, convinced that prosperity comes with hard work rather than wearing polka-dotted clothing or eating round fruits, grapes included.

Better, I feel, to emphasize generosity and goodwill during the holidays, and for that, I will always remember the holidays of 2022 as a touching demonstration of this spirit.

This happened in Guang Ming (Bright Light), a small school of 130 students that I have been running for two years now. The students are all scholars, chosen from low-income families and getting scholarships based on merit and talent.

This last Christmas season, we held a party for the entire community with gift packs for everyone. At one point, Coach Bo Perasol of the UP Fighting Maroons, who is also a consultant with Guang Ming, announced that he had prepared P20,000 in cash to be raffled off and asked the students how they would do this.

The students shouted out no to one grand prize of P20,000, as well as to 10 P1,000 gifts, finally approving 40 P500 prizes.

The faculty and staff were all touched. We knew how hard up many of the students were, with hopes of returning to their hometowns for Christmas with more gifts. Some were having problems trying to raise enough money for their transportation home.

As the cash gifts were raffled off amid cheering and applause, I thought of the biblical parable of Christ and his apostles trying to figure out how to feed a large crowd. His apostles were able to collect only five loaves of bread and two small fish. Imagine pan de sal and tuyo (dried fish).

Somehow, the bread and fish went around, enough to feed the crowds. Generosity multiplies resources, however scarce, generating prosperity that is not just material but of the spirit.

Here’s to a 2023 of shared prosperity!

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