“There’s a story behind everything,” I used to tell my English Comp students at UNM-Taos every semester. “Look for the story.”

One of the ways I strove to drive this point home was to have an end-of-semester party in which each student brought a dish of everyday, popular food, accompanied by the story behind it. The food was spread out, buffet-style, on long tables against one wall, and the students’ one-page stories in the form of short essays were tacked on the wall above each dish.

Take chocolate-chip cookies, for instance, which at least one student always brought. There’s a fascinating, true story behind this favorite American cookie’s origin. (To learn it, Google origin of Toll House Cookies.) Rice, of course, has an ancient history, as does tortillas. (Baloney probably has a ghastly story; no one ever chose it.)

These were meant to be lessons in observation and curiosity – really noticing the things around us which we might otherwise ignore, and inquiring about them – all part of the bigger picture I was trying to convey called Critical Thinking.

I thought of this this week while doing my weekly shopping at La Comer, the large, bright, well managed superstore here in San Miguel de Allende. The holiday signs and decorations are up, holiday music is in the air, and – WHAT!? – women’s red and yellow undies are clearly on display near the checkout counters. I wondered: How many of us gringos know the story behind this seemingly innocent (after all, this is a family store) custom?

In Mexico, as in many Latin countries I’ve learned, the underwear a woman wears on New Year’s Eve is thought to have a big impact on her year ahead. Yellow undies, so the story goes, bring good financial fortune. Red undies bring luck in love.

I had a friend here, my age, who’s since returned to the States, who tested this hypothesis one New Year’s Eve. She wore red panties beneath her otherwise simple, classic party dress. And sure enough, she met a sweet man that night and fell in love. She became a believer.

Every culture, I suppose, has its own New Year’s Eve traditions – expressions of hope, however strange to outsiders, that the year ahead will be a good one, perhaps better than the year just passed.

My German grandmother, for example, if she was visiting, would make our family German herring salad (from jarred pickled herring, cooked cubed beets, and boiled potatoes) to bring us all good luck in the New Year. (I don’t remember her trick ever working.) She would have been horrified, I’m sure, by the thought of wearing daring red or yellow panties for the occasion.

But leave it to good-natured Mexicans to cling to this fun undies tradition. Mexicans have a way of laughing at life, I’ve observed, which is well worth emulating.

I’m now considering buying a pair of both – yellow and red – and wearing them together this New Year’s Eve because I’m in an especially hopeful mood about 2023.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS TO ALL MY WOW READERS! AND GOOD LUCK, GOOD HEALTH, GOOD FORTUNE, AND MUCHO LOVE IN THE NEW YEAR.