​The onion calendar: A folk forecasting tradition

By Sabrina Hornung

sabrina@hpr1.com

The onion calendar is an old German folk tradition used to predict levels of moisture each month throughout the coming year using salt, a knife, an onion and a little bit of patience. Donna and Delbert Eszlinger of Ashley, North Dakota, honor this tradition each New Year’s Eve. They along, with a number of other locals, swear by it.

“It’s a German tradition that's been carried on from grandparents and great grandparents,” Donna Eszlinger said of the onion calendar. “That's how they predicted the weather years ago and we kind of follow along with the old German traditions because we enjoy doing it — and because there was some truth to those things.”

She stresses that the calendar doesn’t predict the weather as far as potential storms, hail, or blizzards, but serves as an example of weather folklore used to determine the level of moisture throughout the calendar year. According to the Eszlingers, you take a nice, round, well-formed onion, cut it in half lengthwise, and peel apart the layers so the layers form cups. One side is indicative of the first six months of the year, and the other represents the last six months.

You then take a teaspoon of salt and put it in each of the cups between 11 p.m. and 12 a.m. on New Year’s Eve, then let it sit on a windowsill overnight. On New Year's morning there may or may not be a certain amount of moisture in each of the onion cups. This indicates how much moisture one can predict for each month in the new year.

“If you're getting moisture in March, April and sometimes in May, you end up with snow,” Eszlinger said. “There is a science to it. You know, when we did it, January and July are the two outer layers of these two halves of onion. One year, January, had a lot of moisture and the July month — which is the same piece of onion, only on the other half of the onion — there was nothing in there. So you can tell me why one of those halves has moisture and the other one did not?”

Ashley is a tight knit German Russian community located in the heart of south central North Dakota, steeped in tradition. In fact, the local newspapers, The Ashley Tribune and Wishek Star, have been known to report on the Eszlinger’s onion calendar reading annually and it proves to be one of the year’s most popular stories. For this agrarian community, any kind of news or heads up in regard to anticipated moisture levels, is hopeful, especially within a string of dry years.

According to Delbert, it doesn’t matter where the onion comes from, though according to other local sources, others are pretty adamant that the onion be locally sourced. It’s also noted that this forecast only pertains to the area where the reading takes place. Donna said previous years had been pretty accurate — well, aside from 2020.

“The whole year was crazy,” she said. “So what's one onion? I mean, that’s why we have weather forecasters and they’re not right either a lot of the time. They can tell us the weather 10 days down the road and by day three the weather’s changed!”

That being said, we had to consult longtime Fargo, North Dakota-based meteorologist John Wheeler to weigh in on the onion calendar after getting the Eszlingers’ reading in 2022.

“I’m not big on folklore forecasting if there’s no physical connection,” he said. “I can conceive of nothing in onion layers that would connect to weather by month, unless it’s magic and I’ve never seen evidence of magic. “Long range weather prediction by science is not very good for many reasons. Scientific knowledge is often incomplete and I’m okay with that. I’ll always prefer the best available empirical evidence to blind faith.”

He suggests testing the onion calendar method using several onions. Testers could even different kinds of onions to see if they wield different results.

Another method as reported in the Nov/Dec 1982 edition of Country People magazine cited the onion calendar as a Swiss tradition. Country People interviewed Wilbur Hefti, a lifelong farmer and resident of rural Carroll, Nebraska. He had a different approach to the calendar. He explained that this method was passed down from generation to generation within his family and needs to take place between 11 p.m. and midnight on Christmas Eve, the hour that Christ was believed to be born.

According to this method, six large cooking onions as big as one’s fist are used. Each onion must be cut in half lengthwise. Once the center core is popped out of each onion, a cup is formed within the onion. Again, each onion half represents a month, and within each cup ¾ of a teaspoon of salt is added. Once the salt is added to each onion the three holy names, “Father, Son, Holy Spirit” are uttered over each cup. Once all of the onions are salted, the sign of the cross is made over the lineup of onions with a silent hand gesture. The onions then remain untouched until morning.

According to the article, Hefti claimed that his onion predictions ran 60-80% accurate. He even recalled his father performing the ritual during the Christmas of 1935 during the peak of the Depression. The onions were bone dry in the summer months.

“Nothing’s 100% sure,” Hefti admitted. “Still, with the onions, you’re just about able to tell if you’re going to have a crop next year or not, right there on Christmas Eve.”