Making the cover of Cutting It Close magazine yet again, my husband and I touched down in Bogotá slightly before 10 pm on December 31st. I had splurged on a room at the Four Seasons for the night, and I probably never will again. They money was wasted as we sprinted out of the taxi and to the reception, sweating, sandy, and with no time for the pleasantries that a 5-star hotel demanded. We had already experienced a full day of travel and touring the coastal city of Cartagena. The hotel staff stood by, equally baffled by our sense of urgency and how to provide a luxury experience to travelers like ourselves.We ran upstairs just to sprint back down again.
We needed to get to Andre Carne de Res, a national chain of restaurants known for serving traditional Colombian food in a festive atmosphere. As fate would have it, the reservation we had made was not for the location 5 minutes walking from our hotel. It was instead for the location a 40-minute drive back towards the airport.
The front desk was prepared for all kinds of different hospitality request, but not for something like this. It was already after 11 pm. We opened out apps to discover that Uber was also out of the question. So we headed outside, determined to wander the freezing streets in search of transport. We would later learn that we were in a zone that didn’t allow taxis at that time of night. Wandering haplessly, we finally managed to flag one down and barter our way into a ride.
We rode to the outskirts of Bogotá. Eventually coming to a bumpy unpaved road and reaching the restaurant a mere 10 minutes before midnight. With the festivities already well underway, we hurried through the maze of eclectic decor to our table. We found a small kit of items waiting for us. A neatly packaged sample of Colombia’s New Year’s Eve traditions. The package included 12 grapes, to eat at each stroke of midnight. Strips of paper, to write down what we wanted to let go of and then burn. And most intriguingly of all, a small cloth doll.
This little doll is made to be burned on New Year’s Eve as a representation of El Año Viejo (The Old Year). Colombians traditionally make these dolls life-sized or even bigger. They sometimes make them to represent specific individuals, such as unpopular politicians or other cultural figures. The dolls are decorated with old clothes and stuffed with sawdust, And for the adventurous, sometimes even fireworks. In more recent years there has been a push to replace the large dolls with the much smaller version, like what we received at our table, to avoid burn injuries.
I had assumed that El Año Viejo was a tradition native to Colombia that had survived Colonialism. It turns out, quite the opposite is true. Burning a humanoid figure to ring in the New Year is a pagan tradition from the Iberian peninsula that survived Christianity. Europeans brought the tradition with them to the Americas where it then took hold in Colombia and Ecuador, among a few other Latin American countries.
To be perfectly honest, I didn’t have the heart to burn my own little doll. But I did write down the things I wanted to let go of. I ventured outside, champagne glass in hand. Smiling wildly and swirling with the thundering crowd. Everyone was signing a song I didn’t know, but that didn’t stop me from wanting to join in. It was bitter cold on the patio, lit softly with hanging lights. Brightly colored and glittering decorations covered every surface.
I danced my way to the blazing bonfire in the center. The little wishes of release I had written fluttered from my outstretched hand. The hungry flames consumed them. Gone in an instant, turned to ash, billowed up, and scattered. I sighed and looked up and the stars, watching the smoke curl and disappear into the cold black sky. Having let all my burdens go, I didn’t feel purified exactly, as the ritual intended. I didn’t have any new resolutions or direction. But I did I feel free and light. I was ready to start it all over again, continuing to wander about into the New Year.
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