At this time of Christmas, many Spaniards will have walked through the windows of all kinds of stores to choose their traditional red underwear and thus comply with one of the many traditions that are hidden behind the day of New Year.
Putting your right foot on the ground when you enter 2022, putting a ring in a glass of champagne or taking the twelve grapes to the beat of the last twelve seconds of the year are the superstitions that join the custom of wearing underwear red. The reason for everything is clear: to get a little luck for the coming year. But where is the origin of underwear?
Red, the color of witchcraft and the occult
Everything seems to indicate that the custom of wearing red underwear comes from the medieval conception that associated the color red with the practices of witchcraft and the occult arts . For this reason, this striking color was strictly prohibited in the society of the Middle Ages, in which the most extreme Catholicism reigned lethally and all kinds of suspicions of witchcraft were persecuted through the Inquisition.
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The solution, by way of rebellion, that the contemporaries of the Middle Ages came up with was to hide the red clothes so as not to be accused of using magic and end up at the stake, which is why they began to use the red garments as underwear.
From witchcraft to luck
With the passage of time and cultural changes, the color red (in addition to its meaning related to passion and love), being related to witchcraft, has also become a synonym of good luck if used of underwear.
However, this tradition has not remained the same in all countries, since there are places in the world that have other reference colors to call good luck for the new year. In Latin America, the color red is not used homogeneously, but, for example, in Colombia, it is considered good luck to start the year with yellow underwear, while in Argentina the color pink is used.
Be that as it may, each culture has its own rites to call for good luck, and to leave behind another year marked by the coronavirus, we are all going to try to enter 2022 on the right foot, twelve eaten grapes, a ring in the glass of champagne and red underwear.
