New Year’s Blog Hop 2015

Alanna Coca

5067775_blogWel­come! I hope you’re hav­ing fun hop­ping along with us on this very fes­tive New Year’s Week­end! If you don’t know me, I’m romance author Alan­na Coca, also writ­ing erot­ic romance as Olivia Brynn. I write most­ly con­tem­po­rary sin­gle titles, includ­ing west­erns and inter­ra­cial short sto­ries, but I do have an his­toric west­ern thrown in there. If you’d like a sam­ple, I have some Free Reads! They’re on the right side­bar as you scroll, so please pick one up in your favorite for­mat. Vis­it my web­sites at your leisure by click­ing my names above.

First, I’d like to share this video that Google made. Seri­ous­ly worth 90 sec­onds of your time

Now I’ve got a lit­tle chal­lenge for you. One of the fol­low­ing ten facts about New Year’s cel­e­bra­tions around the world is NOT true. Can you find it?

1) In Spain, when the clock strikes mid­night, they eat twelve grapes–one for each lucky month ahead. Are grapes even in sea­son in January?

2) In Den­mark, they throw dish­es at oth­er peo­ple’s front doors. Those who end up with the most bro­ken dish­es on their porch are con­sid­ered lucky, as they have an abun­dance of loy­al friends. I sup­pose these folks feel pres­sured to have din­ner par­ties after that, since none of their friends have any dish­es left.

3) In Argenti­na, it’s good luck to start off the new year by step­ping for­ward with your right foot at exact­ly 12:00 a.m. Tough luck for one-left-legged Argentinians.

4) In Egypt, sev­er­al vil­lages dress their old­est liv­ing male res­i­dent in white robes, then parade him down the main road where the rest of the cit­i­zens pin watch faces onto his cloth­ing. By the time the elder­ly man fin­ish­es his trek, his cloth­ing could weigh upwards of 300 pounds! I’d hate to see what they do to their youngest inhabitant.

5106113_blog5) Res­i­dents of Brazil dress all in white on New Year’s Eve to ward away bad spir­its, then gath­er at the beach to toss flow­ers into the water to appease the god­dess Yema­ja. I’m all for liv­ing any­where that I can be on a beach on Jan­u­ary first.

6) In Colum­bia, you’d walk around your neigh­bor­hood car­ry­ing an emp­ty suit­case to encour­age trav­el­ing in the new year. Not sure what des­tiny a full suit­case would bring.

7) The Japan­ese ring a bell exact­ly 108 times, and they believe it is good luck to begin the new year laugh­ing. This should be easy for us all!

8) Every year on Christ­mas Day, peo­ple in a small Peru­vian vil­lage engage in fist fights to set­tle all of their dif­fer­ences so they can begin the new year with a clean slate. I think this is where Fes­tivus came from.

9) The first Scot to cross a friend or neigh­bor’s thresh­old bear­ing gifts of food, whiskey and mon­ey is called “First Foot­ing”. But what would hap­pen if I’m vis­it­ing my friend and she’s out vis­it­ing some­one else?

10) In South Africa, they throw old appli­ances out of their win­dows to ring in the new year. Must be a pret­ty dan­ger­ous place for a stroll.

OrnamentsOkay, my chal­lenge to you: Only one of the above ten facts is NOT TRUE! In your com­ment below, give me the fact num­ber that you think is too out­landish to be true.  I’m putting com­ments on mod­er­a­tion to hide them from the rest of you, because peek­ing! So don’t wor­ry if your com­ment does­n’t show, it’s there. Probably.

Every­one who’s right will get one of my hand­made Christ­mas orna­ments pic­tured here »

just in time for you to pack it away for next year! (sor­ry) So leave your ship­ping address in the com­ment, I’ll keep the com­ments hid­den so they won’t show for any­one but me.

Every­one who com­ments will be put in a draw­ing for the win­ner’s choice of a dig­i­tal back­list title. Good luck, and enjoy! After you com­ment, click this big pur­ple but­ton to vis­it the next author’s site. You won’t want to miss this:

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Happy New Year!

 

24 thoughts on “New Year’s Blog Hop 2015”

    1. Num­ber 10 does seem strange, but I read it on the internet!

      So yeah. Maybe I should have ver­i­fied my sources, who knows how true it is. Since the quiz was­n’t very sci­en­tif­ic, I’m send­ing an orna­ment to any­one who wants one, but you’ll have to email me your mail­ing address!

      Reply

  6. Don’t for­get to leave your mail­ing address in the com­ment if you want an orna­ment! I’ll delete all per­son­al info, I promise.
    That’s why com­ments aren’t pub­licly show­ing, but I can see them. I’ve got a few cor­rect answers already!

    Reply

    1. Jean, accord­ing to some ran­dom blog post I read, #10 is cor­rect! I made up #4…but as I said above, who knows if the blog­ger I read made #10 up, I did­n’t ver­i­fy fur­ther. Sooo… I’ll send you an orna­ment also if you email me your ship­ping address! alanna@alannacoca.com

      Reply

  9. Sev­er­al of these are HUH? You’ve got to be kid­ding! The least like­ly is throw­ing out old appli­ances in South Africa. Main­ly because it would­n’t be a very old tra­di­tion not to men­tion even more waste­ful than bro­ken dish­es! And who would like to clean up those doors in Denmark?
    Thanks for the fun con­test. If I’m right, don’t wor­ry about the orna­ment, I’m par­tic­i­pat­ing in the blog myself and hav­ing fun read­ing every­one else

    Reply

    1. Mona, I agree. And with my wise-crack­ing friends, I’d prob­a­bly get dish­es thrown at my door all night long. That would scare the crap out of me! But accord­ing to the ran­dom blog I read, that’s what they do.

      I’m glad you had fun! We should do it again soon 🙂

      Reply

  10. My guess is #2 =)

    If you´re OK with me being Inter­na­tion­al, I´d love to win one of your orna­ments <3

    Thanks for the give­away & Hap­py New Year!
    //Linda

    Reply

    1. Lin­da, the answer was #4! Even though you weren’t right, I’ll check how much it would cost me. I tried to send a paper­back book to Swe­den once and they want­ed $80. The book only cost me $6!

      Sor­ry I’m so cheap, but we’ll see. I’ll email you what­ev­er I find. Thanks for stop­ping by! I’m a big fan of Swe­den. (do you have a guest room??)

      Reply

Whadd'ya think?