In Japan the New Year is the biggest holiday of the year, and it is quiet. It is spent at home, with family, with food made in advance, and with a handful of small customs that most households still keep in some form. Many of them translate well to a home anywhere.
Here they are in order, from the end of the old year to the middle of the new one.
By December 28: the house
The year-end clean, osoji, should be finished, ending at the entrance. The New Year decoration goes up on the twenty-eighth: traditionally kadomatsu, pine and bamboo placed on either side of the door, or a shimekazari, a small rope decoration, above it.
Not on the twenty-ninth, because nine can be read as ku, suffering. Not on the thirty-first, because decorating on the last night, ichiya-kazari, was thought too hasty to be sincere. A single pine branch in a jar by the door is a perfectly good version.
December 29 and 30: the food
Osechi, the New Year food, was cooked in advance so that nobody had to cook during the first three days of January. Each dish carries a small wish: black beans for good health, herring roe for many children, sweet chestnuts for wealth, prawns, bent like an old back, for a long life.
Most households now buy some of it and make some of it. The idea underneath is easy to borrow: cook on the thirtieth, rest on the first three days.
December 31: omisoka
The last day of the year. In the evening, toshikoshi soba, year-crossing noodles: long for a long life, and easily cut, so the troubles of the year are cut off with them. At midnight temple bells are rung one hundred and eight times, joya no kane, one strike for each of the worldly desires of Buddhist teaching.
January 1 to 3: the first days
The first sunrise of the year, hatsuhinode, is watched by anyone who is awake for it. The first visit to a shrine or temple, hatsumode, is made in the first few days, often with a small fortune drawn on paper. New Year cards, nengajo, arrive on the first morning; they are posted in December and delivered all at once.
These are days for doing very little, which is the point.
January 2: kakizome
The first writing of the year. Traditionally a word or short phrase written with a brush, chosen as an intention for the year. It needs no calligraphy. One word, written slowly, on good paper, and kept somewhere it will be seen.
January 7: nanakusa-gayu
Rice porridge with seven spring herbs, eaten on the seventh to rest a stomach tired from the New Year food and to wish for good health. Any plain rice porridge with a handful of fresh greens is in the spirit of it.
The seventh is also the end of matsu no uchi, the period when the pine decorations stay up, in much of eastern Japan. In the Kansai region it is often the fifteenth.
January 11: kagami biraki
The round rice cakes, kagami mochi, that sat on the household altar or shelf through the New Year are broken, not cut, and eaten, usually in a sweet red bean soup. Breaking rather than cutting is deliberate: the New Year is opened, not ended.
Keeping a little of it
Nobody outside Japan needs all of this. But the shape is worth keeping: a clean house before the year turns, food made ahead, three days of rest, one written word, and a plain meal on the seventh to bring the holiday to a close.
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This article is part of a series exploring Japanese philosophy and intentional living: