New Year’s Eve Simmer Pot

New Year’s Eve is a time when cultures all over the world practice various traditions to clear out the old year and start the new year off positively. An easy (and nice smelling!) way to practice a few of them is to make up a special New Year’s simmer pot. Use this recipe as a start and add anything else that speaks to you– you might just really like the smell or want to encourage more of what the plant symbolizes in your life. Juniper is featured here both because it smells nice and because it is used in the Scottish tradition of Hogmanay, or celebration of the last night of the year. It is used for saining or protecting/ blessing the household. The branches are set on fire and the smoke is directed throughout the house. So, while this doesn’t fill your house with smoke, it does fill it with fragrance. Upon further research it also supports boundaries, hope and new beginnings all of which feel very new year appropriate. If you don’t have any juniper growing nearby you can also buy the berries in the spice aisle in a grocery store. Sage is a common plant to use in smoke cleansing as well and adds an earthy herbal scent. It represents wisdom and health. Cinnamon and allspice (cloves are not a bad addition here either) bring prosperity, comfort and success and smell amazing. I like to add star anise on New Year’s for it’s association with divination.(See some of our fortune telling NYE games here.) You can choose a specific evergreen from the list below, or do what I do and use fallen needles from your holiday tree. They smell great, would otherwise go to waste and start to bring some closure to the season. Rosehips can be found in the woods still clinging to branches this time of year, I like to use the invasive multiflora rose that animals can’t eat for double duty. And good fortune peace and prosperity are things we could all use in the new year! Last bay leaves, I nearly always include bay leaves in my simmer pots. They smell amazing and they set intentions. You can write your wishes or intentions for the new year right on them and stir them into the pot.

If you have never made a simmer pot before, just bring some water to a simmer on the stove (or in a crockpot or pot on a wood stove if you have one) and add your chosen ingredients. Let it simmer away all day and beautiful fragrance will waft into your home. Add water as needed. When you are done you can compost the contents.

Herbs & Spices for the Simmer Pot

• Bay: protection and the consecration of wishes (You can write wishes or intentions on them before adding them to the pot)
• Oranges: joy
• Lemon: cleansing & purification
• Cinnamon: comfort, success, strength & prosperity
• Cloves: drive away negativity and attract positivity
• Thyme: prosperity
• Allspice: wealth, success
• Sage: wisdom, health
• Rosemary: remembrance, mental clarity
• Star Anise: magic, luck & divination
• Lavender: peace
• Rosehips: good fortune, peace, confidence & prosperity
• Sweetshrub: benevolence, wit, compassion
• Beautyberry: beauty
• Evergreens: symbols of everlasting life and yule
• Spruce: generosity, protection, healing, resilience & strength
• Pine: strength, rebirth, wisdom
• Fir: determination, honesty, passion
• Juniper: purification, boundaries, hope, new beginnings
• Cedar: expels negativity
• Angelica: balance, protection
• Heather: good luck, protection, good health