A rare collection of entertaining facts on the New Year's theme is complete without mentioning a somewhat strange Italian custom. If you believe articles and books, in this country, on the night of the holidays from windows and balconies, old and broken things fly on the street. And even furniture. We checked whether this is so.

Typically, the articles are reported approximately following:

“The Italian New Year's tradition known to the world is to throw furniture from the windows to the streets. And by the way, not only furniture, but also dishes, utensils, clothes and other unnecessary things. The Italians sacredly believe that there is no happiness in the new year, if you do not get rid of unnecessary trash.

Where did this unusual and even dangerous come from (well, what if a frying pan falls on you on New Year's Eve)?

It is generally accepted that the roots of traditions go away during ancient Rome and the custom has two interpretations associated with pagan beliefs and superstitions. New Year is the beginning of a new life, its new cycle, and therefore everything that surrounds us should be updated. Thus, narrow Mediterranean streets are filled with sofas, pots and old torn pants. Another interpretation says that the ancient Romans threw furniture from the windows in the hope of roaring "evil spirits" and free their house from evil spirits. "

It is natural to assume that the information that the year after year feed readers around the world did not appear from scratch. Moreover, the Italians themselves colorfully tell about tradition. They love to portray her in the cinema. For example, in the 1960 film “Joyi Laughter” with the top actors of national cinema, Anna Managani and Toto:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z64IEGVDGBY&t=44M11S

In the cult comedy of 1975, Fantozzi:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_akr_wcaga&t=44M2S

And in the Oscar -winning "New Cinema" Paradisito "1988 director Giuseppe Tornator:

It is important to note that in most documentary sources mentioning this tradition, the south of Italy, in particular Naples, serves as an advance. It is about this city in the indicated context that Kozimo Arricello writes in his book “Italian grief. Life with Mussolini "whose action takes place in the second quarter of the XX century.

But what tells American officer Bruce Holdt about his stay in Naples in the 1970s:

“One of the neighbors warned us not to be on the street at midnight, since the Italians have a tradition of throwing old things and replacing them with new ones. The next day, the street was cluttered with various things thrown out by Italians. ”

From the above evidence, we can conclude that at least half a century ago, the custom of throwing old things from home was quite common. And what about our days?

Ava Labo Capo in her book 2013 “Traditions / superstition from all over the globe!” Notesthat this South Italian tradition ceased to exist.

In 2018, a guest of the Russian project “Our people. Rome ”was the Italian Fabio Aquilanti. According to him words, “Nobody throws furniture from the windows for the New Year in Italy, such a tradition was in the past and only in the south of the country. To this day, the custom of giving children before the New Year a calendar with chocolates and decorate the Christmas tree with new toys every year. ”

On the new year of the Italian resource Capodanno.org It is said:

“This custom gradually disappears. To “expose” the past, you can simply throw too close clothes in a bucket, a plush bear of your mature child or an old video cassette. ”

However, judging by the news reports, rumors about the death of tradition are greatly exaggerated. Meeting 2020, the inhabitants of one of the suburbs of Naples Castellamar-di-Stabia, in fact, turned the center of the commune into a landfill:

Castellammare, lancio di mobili dai balconi: aperta un'inchiesta

Everything flew to the ground - up to furniture and sanitary ceramics. The mayor of the city even Initiated Investigation, and many inhabitants threatened large fines. Thousands of citizens subsequently reached an unplanned subbotnik to return a decent look to their native streets.

Oddly enough, this somewhat wild custom in more civilized times migrated to the South African Republic, or rather, in one of the most criminal regions of Johannesburg-Hillbro. Somehow one of the local passers-by was even killed by a refrigerator. But there, the emergence of tradition led their objective reasons. When the apartheid regime fell in the mid-90s, many whites migrated from the then fashionable Hillbroe to the northern suburbs of Johannesburg, to private houses surrounded by electric fences and armed security. The city was flooded with representatives of the indigenous population, who previously did not have the right to even freely move here, but now they reached for housing and work. Squaters seized apartments in high -rise buildings and began to dispose of other people's property as their own. So Hillbrou became a symbol of crime rampant, and the throwing of furniture on New Year's Eve - a kind of act of self -expression. However, in recent years, the sad consequences of this tradition have been minimized due to the presence of a large number of police officers.

Thus, the Italian tradition of throwing old objects from the windows on New Year's Eve still exists-however, it is concentrated in the south of the country. Even there, these days, practice cannot be called common, and it rarely comes to large things. However, the custom is still alive.