The landlocked country of South America, Paraguay celebrates its New Year in concord with most of the rest of the world on January 1. New Year is also called as ‘Ano Viejo’.
The New Year celebrations in Paraguay are grand, with lots of merrymaking, enthusiasm, fascination, and dynamism involved in it.
Also, they do make sure to thoroughly include and follow their customs and traditions as a part of those celebrations. The way with which the natives of Paraguay celebrates the New Year time, and the way with which this beautiful nation welcomes everyone during those days, certainly make the New Year time to be the best of the year to visit the country. To ensure that everyone has a good time, the New Year Day is observed as a public holiday in Paraguay.
New Year Celebrations in Paraguay
New Year celebrations in Paraguay are considered as amongst the best of the world and as the widely celebrated festival of the country. Numbers of local events, both modern day as well as cultural, are organized all over the country in different degrees.
Streets are decorated with lights and flowers, which reflect classiness and splendor of the skyline of the nation, as well as reflecting the enthusiasm with which it welcomes the New Year. Carnivals, street processions, live shows, cultural shows, concerts, and parties in night clubs, discotheques, and pubs draw masses of crowd from the nation as well as tourists from far flung places of the world. One can witness the best New Year celebrations in the Asuncion, the capital city of Paraguay.
The most popular and grand way to celebrate New Year in Paraguay is to board a cruise for the day, and celebrate the moments of the arrival of the new time while being in the middle of a sea or an ocean.
Special preparations are made to put New Year cruises in order according to the moment of New Year celebration. It I one of the favorite ways both among the young local crowd as well as tourists visiting the country, as it gives them with a unique and an extravagant way to celebrate their New Year’s eve, and ensure a grand welcome to the first moment of the New Year. The cruise tour includes dining and drinking which include stetting served with best of the cuisines and finest of wines, and also dancing to the tunes of soothing music.
Traditional New Year Celebrations in Paraguay
Most of the customs and traditions are drawn from South American countries, which were later adopted by the people of Paraguay, and have now reached to the state where they are intact part of the lives of people of Paraguay. Each and every tradition as followed by the natives of Paraguay during the New Year times holds an essence and significance of its own.
There is a tradition of creating a life size effigy of a human, and then dressing it up like a scarecrow. Old newspapers and firecrackers are put over it. It is then burnt at the midnight, with the arrival of New Year. According to this tradition, a scarecrow defines for bad luck and bad things of the past time, and burning it symbolizes for burning those bad things to give a new optimistic start to the New Year. People dance, cheer, and joy with enthusiasm as soon as the firecrackers put in the effigy set off to burn it.
There is another tradition of keeping all doors, cupboards, and windows open on the midnight of New Year. Also, people in the household make noises by beating pots and pans, and by setting off firecrackers. It is done with a belief that loud noises sway away all the evil spirits and negative energies away out of the life of the people of household.