Spot the Frippet: dots.

Fed up with the New Year traditions of your home country? 

Have you had enough alcohol, nor want to stay up until midnight, and definitely don't want to risk being snogged by Cousin Rodney as the clock strikes twelve?

Do you believe that watching Scottish revelry on television will get the year off to the worst possible start?

Don't you actually like collard greens?

Don't you want to smash crockery on a neighbour's door (as has formerly been the Danish custom) or to throw flowers in the sea, as in Brazil?

Well, then, why not go for a Filipino New Year celebration? All you have to do is make a lot of noise (set off firecrackers, bang pots, sound car horns etc). Then you also have to jump in the air at the stroke of midnight (to make yourself grow taller), open all the doors and windows (to let in blessings), eat twelve grapes (a borrowed Spanish tradition, one for luck in each month of the year), and find and gather together lots and lots of round things. So: wear polka dots, eat oranges, and fill your pockets with coins (as long as they're round coins, which isn't always the case in Britain).

Apparently the round things will make you get rich. 

NB: I'm not saying it'll work: but it can't do any harm, can it?

Well, not as long as they're your coins, it can't, anyway.

Spot the Frippet: dots. The word dot comes from the Old English dott which means, rather horribly, the head of a boil. It's related to the Old High German tutta, which means nipple and the Dutch dott, which means lump.