We do not know who and where the idea of collecting round fruits for luck in every new year emanated. The practice of collecting such round fruits, in some places thirteen kinds while in other places of a different number, is widespread across the socio-economic strata. Rich and poor are afflicted with the belief that good fortune is bound to come to those who are able to collect for display those round fruits. Practically, it is really tough finding round fruits in all its strictest sense since most fruits are either oblong, oval or in some cases pointed and elongated far from round. But those in the practice had the tolerance of seeing fruits to be round even if they are actually not. In the haste of completing the number of kinds, people take even the not round fruits as acceptably round.
If there is good luck in the practice, it is chiefly to the fruit vendors who take the opportune time to increase their sales volume as well as their profit margin due to the high demand. In some cases, the buyers who are duped into the belief are forced to take fruits that are not only not round but are not mature and not ripe and are not for human consumption as well. Such fruits are truly for display in the passing of year and never for consumption by the person who bought such fruits. These unripe and immature fruits are later to be found in the waste bin or compost pit, for luck that this writer would never be able to understand how.
Good manners is always towards not wasting food as the fruits are, they being graces from God. It is mind boggling how people who could hardly eat or afford a good meal for the family can spend so much on an unfounded belief, buying overpriced round fruits that are not even for consumption but for mere display as the gods of superstitions tell through mongering out of nowhere. There is nothing wrong just taking the belief as passed on by word of mouth those who are into the practice would justify. But spending so much on overpriced fruits that are not really round as mandated at the expense of significant things like basic food for the family is just so grave a wrong by any measure.
Those who had been at it had surely remained wishing for that same good luck that every new year brings. Doing the ritual every year is an indication that the good luck of the past years never came true as the round fruits collected in those years were believed to have brought about. Only the opportunist sellers of overpriced fruits that look like or as if round are getting the goodness of that promise, by raking in a good fortune from the sales of such fruits every start of the year.
If anything, such belief departs from our belief in God who grants us all the graces and blessings we need. We do not know how accurate the belief is or if the same had really some goodness brought for the new year. Nothing had ever been recorded as resulting from such belief of collecting round fruits every new year. We had just been following what some consider as tradition, one whose beginnings we are unsure of. A belief whose foundations are as unfounded as its founders are except that money brings prosperity to those who sell round fruits to people who had somehow been captive in the belief of roundedness.
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