By Zoe Christodoulidou-Bosko

Did you make your New Year’s Resolution?

Happy New Year Everyone! An exciting year has begun waiting to create many new memories!

Since it was New Years, I really hope you did not forget your New Years Resolutions! Of course I know that not everybody takes it seriously (including me), however it is a nice tradition to do. Creating goals for the future, wanting to achieve something, even something small, is a good way of starting the year. Everyone’s goal is different, for some it’s to achieve something in school, for others it is in their hobbies or activities such as sports. Why not want to achieve something exciting you’ve been holding off for a while? Our advice is to make the way to your goal exciting and interesting by remaining loyal to your resolution!

2025?!

2024 has gone by so quickly! When it was New Years for 2024 it seemed as if it would take ages to reach 2025, but here we are! Already mid-January, with the burden of exams and studies that we need to complete already being introduced. Every year has its hard parts, but who’s to say there won’t be exciting and fun parts too?! School activities will get harder but not necessarily as bad as we think. We are the ones who can change the way we do anything and decide how we would like to achieve our goals. So make this year a successful year full of fun and memories!

New Year Celebration!!

As 2025 has come, there are numerous ways of celebrating it. I find it very interesting to learn about other people’s culture and the way they celebrate these celebrations. Since our school is an international school, I have asked some students how they celebrated their New Year or how they celebrate it in their culture. I don’t think I even need to specify that food (a huge quantity of food at that) is in everyones tradition! But in some countries the food actually is the way of celebrating the New Year due to its symbolization. For example, the dessert that you must eat in Cyprus is the Vasilopita, which is a cake that has a coin inside. It is said that whoever ends up finding the coin will have incredible luck the entire year. Also, eating lentils is considered to be a symbol in many countries. These originated in Italy, but now many countries consider them a part of their tradition. Due to their round shape which is reminiscent of coins, they symbolize wealth and good fortune. So eat your lentils like your yiayia tells you to, so you’ll get lucky!

Another very infamous tradition, almost everybody participates in, is eating 12 grapes under the table on New Year’s Eve. It is a Spanish tradition where you are meant to eat all 12 grapes one by one in time with the striking of the clock at midnight on the 31st of December. If you manage to eat all the grapes, you will have a year of prosperity and good luck. Whether it is real or magic, it is very fun especially if you’re doing it with the people you love. 

There is also a Hungarian belief which entails that eating fish on New Year’s Day is considered unlucky because luck would swim away and eating chicken would scrape away your luck, so instead they eat pork because the pig will dig out your luck. 

Drinking champagne, staying awake until midnight and watching the fireworks at a celebration is also a truly remarkable event we all engage in! Since we have the ability to meet people from different parts of the world in our school, why not be interested in how they are celebrating these important events?

We would like to wish everybody a great new year in school, and a fantastic 2025 to make the best out of! Happy New Year everyone!!