What New Year’s Eve tradition in Denmark involves throwing old plates at friends’ doors?

Plate smashing is the Danish New Year’s Eve tradition of throwing old plates at friends’ or neighbors’ doors. The broken crockery is associated with friendship and good luck, and a large pile outside a home can traditionally signal that the household has many well-wishers.

The custom uses unwanted or saved dishes rather than valuable tableware. In older accounts, people smashed plates against doors as a noisy expression of goodwill at the turn of the year. Like many folk customs, its frequency and form vary, and modern celebrations may treat it as a historical practice rather than a universal household activity.

Denmark has other recognizable New Year customs, including jumping from a chair at midnight to symbolically leap into the new year and eating foods such as kransekage. Plate smashing is distinct from breaking a glass for a toast: it involves deliberately breaking crockery at another person’s door as a sign of social connection.