Page 33 - January 2011 • Southern California Gaming Guide

by Gail Anders
For many, the New Year o ers an opportunity to forget the past and make a clean start. Resolutions, anyone? I took an informal poll among my casino-playing friends, and asked if they’d do anything di erent when they go the casino in 2011. I got some interesting responses— all about luck. We gamblers are superstitious, after all.
I have a friend who gambles only on the new moon and the full moon. And another friend—not a casino player—but someone who wants the best outcome for any endeavor—says he looks at the date and how the numbers add up before he does anything of consequence. (01/01/2011 adds up to 6—not a great number, he says. He looks for 7’s and 8’s.) ese considerations would personally drive me crazy, as I follow my intuition about most things, and go the casino when I feel lucky. Don’t ask me how often I win, however.
New Year Lucky Do’s & Don’ts
From the foods eaten to the chores performed, New Year’s customs vary from culture to culture, but remnants of these traditions still survive today. Here are some New
Year’s Day do’s and don’ts I learned about.
✦ Wear new clothes on January 1st and you will have good luck. Red for happiness, and yellow or gold for prosperity are the best colors to wear.
✦ Don’t wash your hair on New Year’s Day or you will wash away any good luck for the New Year.
✦ Stock your cupboard with food and your wallet with money to bring prosperity in the New Year.
✦ Don’t sweep the oor or clean, or you may sweep away your luck.
✦ Pay your bills before New Year’s Eve, so you don’t have any debt for the New Year.
✦ Don’t use knives or scissors on New Year’s Day, or you may cut o good fortune.
✦ Greet your relatives, neighbors and friends and wish them well.
Have a lucky new year! And, by the way, we can celebrate the new year again next month: the Lunar New Year, the Year of the Rabbit, is on February 3rd.
Gail Anders writes about travel and lifestyle, and lives in Laguna Beach and New York. She loves to play in Southern California casinos.
New Year Lucky Eats
Several friends said they believed they could a ect the luck they would have throughout the year by what they ate on New Year’s Day. Depending on your cultural heritage, this can be a long list of lucky food.
Many cultures believe that anything in the shape of a ring is good luck, because it symbolizes “coming full circle,” completing a year’s cycle. For that reason, some people believe eating donuts on New Year’s Day will bring good fortune. A friend from the South celebrates the New Year each year by eating black-eyed peas. Beans are considered good luck in many cultures
because they’re symbolic of money. eir small, seed- like appearance resembles coins that swell when cooked, so they are consumed with nancial rewards in mind. Cooked greens, including cabbage, collards, kale, and chard, are eaten at New Year’s in di erent countries for a simple reason: their green leaves look like folded money. Some people eat pork, some sh, and the lists can go on and on.
One friend, however, gave me a short of list of things not to eat on the New Year. (I knew this research was going to yield something crazy.) Lobster, she said, is a bad idea because lobsters move backwards (who knew?), and eating
them on the rst day of the year could lead to setbacks. Chicken is also discouraged because the bird scratches backwards. Another theory warns against eating any winged fowl because good luck could y away.
A friend, whose mom is German, told me it’s customary to leave a little bit of food on your plate past New Year’s Eve midnight to guarantee a stocked pantry in the New Year. Similarly, in the Philippines, it’s important to have food on the table at midnight. My Filipino friends tell me they eat as much lucky food as they can, but exercise some restraint, or the rst place they’ll be going in the New Year is the gym.
JANUARY 2011
SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA GAMING GUIDE
PAGE 33