New Year's Eve colors and what they mean, from Rio's white to Rome's red

The invite for your friend's New Year's Eve party has one line in bold: wear white. She grew up in São Paulo, and to her that's as obvious as a countdown. Meanwhile your coworker from Mexico City is explaining, very seriously, that what matters is the color you can't see.

In the US, New Year's Eve colors are mostly about sequins and whatever looks good in the photo. In much of the world, the color is a wish. White is for peace, the Brazilian way. Yellow is for money and prosperity, especially in Latin America. Red is for love and luck, from Mexico to Italy. Pink is how you start the year in Argentina and Uruguay, and in Brazil too, according to AFP. Green, blue and purple carry hope, calm and faith in Brazil's longer list. None of it is a proven effect. It's tradition, and the stories behind it are better than the promises.

Brazil's all-white New Year's Eve started on a beach. According to a BBC News Brasil report, wearing white on New Year's became common in the country in the 1970s, when members of Candomblé, an Afro-Brazilian religion, began making their offerings on Copacabana beach. People walking by saw the ritual, liked the white and adopted it.

Brazil's public news agency, Agência Brasil, tells it from another angle. Drawing on babalawo and historian Ivanir dos Santos, it ties the beach customs to African-rooted religions and the worship of Iemanjá, the orisha of the sea and of new beginnings, and credits the link between Iemanjá and New Year's Eve to a pai de santo, an Umbanda priest, who founded an Umbanda federation in the 1950s. In Umbanda, the same report says, white is one of Iemanjá's colors; in Candomblé, it honors Oxalá. The dates differ depending on who tells it. The roots in Afro-Brazilian religions don't. The flowers thrown into the sea, mostly gladioli, are offerings to Iemanjá. And jumping seven waves at midnight is said to open the way through next year's troubles.

So the biggest party on Brazil's calendar is dressed in the colors of an Afro-Brazilian liturgy, whether or not they know it.

In much of Latin America the color goes underneath. An AFP report on the region's rituals lays it out:

• Mexico, Peru and Ecuador: yellow underwear for prosperity. If you're after love, it has to be red.
• Chile: the yellow piece has to be a gift. Some say you should also wear it inside out.
• Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil: you start the year with something pink under your clothes.

The same report quotes writer Héctor Velis-Meza, who wrote a book on the secret history of Christmas and New Year's. Yellow is often linked to bad luck, he says, but on this night it stands for the sun, which represents eternity.

AFP also lists two other customs common across the region: eating lentils, and taking a short walk at midnight carrying a suitcase if you want to travel in the new year.

In Italy, red rules the night. Italy's official tourism portal, italia.it, opens its page on New Year's traditions by calling red, without a doubt, the color of the holidays, and says wearing it brings luck, or so they say. Some wear red underwear inside out and flip it after midnight; others throw it away. The same page brings up lentils: the ancient Romans gave a small purse of them as a gift, hoping they'd turn into coins in the months ahead.

In Spain, red underwear is a New Year's custom too. A report citing the EFE news agency says it should be new and, ideally, a gift, and passes on the origin story people tell: in the Middle Ages red was supposedly banned for its association with witchcraft, so wearing it in secret turned it into a lucky charm. The report offers no evidence for it, so treat it as folklore.

Spain's best-known New Year's ritual isn't a color but it travels with them. Spain's official tourism site describes the scene at Puerta del Sol in Madrid: eating 12 lucky grapes to the chimes of the clock, for 12 months of prosperity.

There are two origin stories. According to Infobae, one says that in 1882 people in Madrid started eating grapes to mock the bourgeois habit of grapes and champagne at dinner. The other credits a huge harvest in 1909, sold as lucky grapes in bags of twelve. Since newspapers already mentioned the custom in 1882, 1909 may just have given it a push. Today, the same outlet reports, about 66% of the grapes eaten on Spanish New Year's Eve come from the Vinalopó area of Alicante.

The grapes spread with Spanish influence. Italia.it calls the twelve grapes an ancient Spanish rite that took hold in Naples and southern Italy during Spanish rule, and AFP describes the same one-grape-per-chime wish across Latin America.

In the Philippines, shape beats color. According to Gulf News, polka dots stand for money and fortune, because round things look like coins. The table gets round fruit, 12, 13 or 14 depending on the family. At midnight people fill their pockets with coins and shake them, and kids jump as high as they can because their elders say it helps them grow taller.

If you like customs like these, there are more, this time about gifts, in gift-giving traditions around the world.

Beyond white, the meaning of each color depends on who's explaining it: an astrologer, a color-theory guide, the person getting dressed. Two Brazilian outlets show the drift. In Correio Braziliense, an astrologer recommends yellow for money and a deep red for love, and a student explains she once wore green for hope and picked blue for serenity. In NSC Total, yellow is joy that may bring money, but green becomes the ideal color for anyone hoping for money. Purple is faith and spirituality, pink is a gentler romance than red, orange is joy and a social life, and black is called controversial in some religions and cultures.

Green is the giveaway: hope on one list, money on another. There's no official chart. Pick the wish that fits your year.

The color of whatever you actually want from next year. Money, yellow. Love, red, or pink if you'd like to take it slow. Peace, white, which has the best story. And if you don't buy any of it, wear whatever looks best in the photo, because the photo is what lasts.

That's the part of the night that sticks around: everyone in white on the beach, the twelve grapes mid-chime, the suitcase lap at midnight. If you want to send those photos with a few words, there are ideas in a New Year message for someone you love, and a method for picking the year's best shots in your year in photos.

And if they deserve better than a forgotten album on your phone, Eternal Gift puts them on one page: you build it online with the photos from the night and the year, a message or letter, your midnight song from YouTube and stickers, and send it by link or QR code.