By Nishitha Ann John
KUWAIT: As the clock strikes twelve, eat twelve grapes, one for each toll, within the first sixty seconds. If it’s past midnight and you haven’t finished eating them, legend has it, your wishes won’t come true. With New Year around the corner, scroll through Instagram or TikTok and you’ll see countless posts about how people’s years supposedly turned out after eating their grapes under a table.
While it is a tradition that originated in Spain, it has now gained global popularity, with people in Kuwait also hopping on the trend. Hayuna, a Filipino woman living in Kuwait, shared a TikTok titled, “In my lover girl era, POV: the grapes worked.”
Meanwhile, Joan, another Filipino in Kuwait, posted a contrasting take: “2025 is almost over and those stupid grapes still haven’t worked.” Their posts highlight the ambiguity of the tradition—following it doesn’t necessarily guarantee the results you hope for. While the trends are recent, the tradition of eating grapes go back to the 1880s where it was first eaten in protest by the Spaniards in response to the French’s bourgeois celebrating New Years by drinking champagne and eating grapes. Afterwards, it became widely popular as surplus harvest led grape farmers to promote the idea of indulging in 12 grapes at midnight in hopes of selling those extra grapes.
Two centuries later, the tradition of eating grapes ‘under the table’ became a quirky twist that became popular through TikTok. In conversation with Vogue, Noel Wolf, a cultural expert and language teacher at Babbel, commented on the trend. “Some think that hiding under a table is meant to attract your soul mate.” Variations of this tradition, Wolf said, include wearing red undergarments to bring extra luck in the areas of love and wealth.
While this ritual has been gaining traction on social media, beware! in the rush to finish twelve grapes within the minute, it’s easy to choke. Therefore, people are advised to chew slowly so that wishing for a hopeful New Year doesn’t turn into an unfortunate accident.
The psychology behind eating grapes and wishing for luck is similar to other superstitions: there’s no direct link proving that grapes bring good fortune. According to an article by the Cleveland Clinic, superstitions are about making brains feel comfortable and safe as belief in something may boost confidence and relieve anxiety. When people eat grapes and wish for prosperity, an unconscious mechanism often guides them to act in ways that may help make their wishes come true.
Additionally, cognitive biases, such as confirmation bias, lead people to notice and remember occasions when eating grapes was followed by good outcomes while also overlooking the times when nothing happened, thereby reinforcing the belief that the ‘ritual’ works.
This raises a question: if December 2026 arrives and luck hasn’t knocked on your door, will you blame the ritual on which you placed your hope? Or will you realize that some luck only comes if you really put your effort into it?
