New Year 2025: How to overcome superstitions and celebrate in a Catholic way

From eating twelve grapes, one for each strike of the clock at midnight, to wearing yellow underwear and going around the block with empty suitcases, New Year’s superstitions have spread and become dangerously normalized throughout Latin America. Faced with this reality, there are many people who ask themselves: Can a Catholic believe in these things?

The Church teaches that all types of superstition are contrary to faith. In fact, numeral 2110 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church prohibits these practices, considering them “a perversion, due to excess, of religion.” Superstition – and everything that derives from it – distances us from the worship of God because an illusory importance is attributed to it.

This “leads to idolatry and different forms of divination and magic,” so Catholics must reject any practice that seeks to alter the future in pursuit of worldly interests.

Superstitions are “spiritual adultery”

A renowned Portuguese exorcist priest, Father Duarte Lara, commented in 2023 that “the sin of superstition is a kind of spiritual adultery” because it lies in waiting for “salvation from a force that does not come from God.”

“The devil takes advantage of the gap,” he told ACI Digital—EWTN News’ Portuguese-language news agency—. The priest stressed that there are ways to receive the New Year in accordance with Catholic piety, such as the plenary indulgence that the Church offers to anyone who prays a God bless you the last day of the year.

“This is a very good thing we can do on New Year’s Eve, ending the year giving thanks to God,” said Father Lara.

“In our culture, superstition has a less important connotation than from a theological point of view. For many, superstition is even nonsense, something that does not make much sense and that we do for luck,” he added.

However, he specified that — from a theological point of view — all superstition is a vice that opposes the moral virtue of religion. Superstition is a sin, he commented, even if it is practiced as “a kind of joke,” because it shows that one is not willing to give God the place he deserves in each heart and because it is also reckless, “because I am encouraging others with my behavior.”

“The only being who really knows the future is God.”

Also in 2023, Father Jorge Obregón, Legionary of Christ priest, delved into the practice of New Year’s predictions, widely spread in the countries of the region, and the position that Catholics should take regarding it.

“We must understand that the only one who knows the future is the creator of all time and space, who is God. Creatures can only conjecture things that will happen, as an old wise man predicts tomorrow through his practical and empirical experience, but only the Creator has certainty,” the founder of the New Fire evangelization platform told ACI Prensa.

Father Obregón explained that a Catholic is someone who fully trusts in God, because “whoever puts his trust in God cannot be disappointed.” And he remembered the phrase of Saint Paul: “If God is with me, who can be against me” (Rom 8, 31).

Furthermore, he stressed that the things that people who dedicate themselves to this can divine do not come from God, but from the evil one and his mysterious forces. “It is not in God’s plan for human beings to know tomorrow,” said Father Obregón.

“Sister Faustina left us a beautiful request that brings so much good to all human beings in our life journey that involves many uncertainties: ‘Jesus, I trust in You.’ In that phrase, not only a popular piety or irrational way of coping with life is hidden at all, but rather the human being is strengthened and sustained by the strength of the Creator of the universe,” he reflected.

And he concluded by assuring that “whoever trusts in God is exercising the second theological virtue of hope.”

So how can you involve faith in your New Year’s resolutions?

An article by Autumn Jones published in Catholic News Agency (CNA)—EWTN News’ English-language agency—presents a list of ideas in a Catholic key to put into practice on New Year’s Eve 2025:

1. What are your intentions?

The important thing when setting your New Year’s resolutions is to proceed with rightness of intention, which is the beginning of the path to perfection. What does God want from me? What virtue should I exercise to please him more?

“As you discern ways to improve yourself or your relationships, try asking Jesus how He wants you to grow and change, rather than how you might want to do it on your own,” Jones wrote.

2. Set small, measurable goals

Don’t aim for goals that require a drastic change in your daily routine, most people want to go from not having any ingrained habits to wanting to practice them all perfectly.

“Take, for example, the resolution to increase prayer life in the new year. For someone who prays at Mass every Sunday, it is a small, measurable goal to increase their prayer by adding an additional day during the week to spend time before the Blessed Sacrament or to pray in the quiet of their home,” explains the author.

3. Consult your spiritual director

Jones suggests that in addition to “inviting Jesus to walk with you in your New Year’s resolutions, consider meeting with a spiritual director” regularly. “Knowing that you are going to share your successes (and your failures) with another person will keep you motivated and often leads to higher success rates in achieving your goal,” he stressed.

4. When you fail, you can always start again

The author also indicates that life will always put obstacles in the way of “perfectly laid out” plans, and that the case of New Year’s resolutions is no exception.

“Practice patience and forgiveness, and consider adjusting your goal or reaffirming your intention to get back on track,” he said.

“Declare your mistakes to God (Sal 32,5) and reaffirm your commitment to start over (Is 43,19). “Jesus makes all things new!” he concluded.