In Denmark's New Year's Eve custom, old plates are traditionally thrown at friends' doors for luck.
The practice involves saving unwanted crockery and throwing it against the doors of friends or neighbors at New Year. A pile of broken plates outside a home is traditionally interpreted as a sign that the household has many loyal friends willing to visit and celebrate with them.
Modern accounts often describe this as a declining or changing custom, since throwing ceramic objects can create safety and cleanup problems. It is one of several Danish New Year's traditions, alongside midnight celebrations and the dessert-like ring-shaped cake called kransekage.
The custom is sometimes confused with the Danish practice of jumping from a chair at midnight, which symbolizes leaping into the new year. Those are separate traditions, and the object associated with door-splitting is specifically old crockery.