Our New Year's Eves are a calm, usually stay at home, in bed by 12:30 kind of celebration. I am usually the one who almost doesn't make it until 12, but Rod & Gauge are the ones who can usually make it way past then. This year, we are in Florida with Tim & Tiff for New Years. And true to tradition, it will be a calm, stay at home kind of celebration, but we will be ringing in the New Year with family, and that makes it that much better.
I think that everyone knows about the New Year's Eve ball drop in Times Square. I thought these were some other pretty cool New Year’s facts that I found on another blog.
1. Kissing your significant other is a favorite New Year's Eve tradition meant to guarantee a good relationship and affections throughout the next year.
2. Las Vegas, Disneyworld and New York City three of the top New Year's Eve destinations. And this year, we were at Disney World one day before New Years, along with 70,000+ other people.
3. About 75% of American New Year's Eve parties involve 20 people or less.
4. The tradition of a ball drop to signal the passage of time began at England's Royal Observatory at Greenwich in 1833.
5. Dick Clark has not appeared on Dick Clark's Rockin New Year's Eve special since 2003.
6. The primetime New Year's Eve show has entertained Americans since Clark began it in 1973 with the exception of New Year's Eve 1999. That year, coverage of the millennium was broadcast throughout the country in a special titled, ABC 2000 Today. Clark did countdown the seconds to midnight as the East Coast welcomed the New Year. And on that New Year’s Eve, the one they promised would surely be a catastrophe because of the year changing from 1999 to 2000, I was pregnant with Gauge, and asleep on the couch by 10 I think, and when I woke up at one and everything still seemed to be as it was, I laughed thinking about all those panicking people who spent tons of money preparing for the millennium.
7. Made of iron and wood and adorned with one hundred 25-watt light bulbs, the first New Year's Eve ball was 5 feet in diameter and weighed 700 pounds.
8. Introduced on November 11, 2008, a new Times Square New Year's Eve ball weighs 11, 875 pounds. The 12-foot geodesic sphere is covered in 2,668 Waterford crystals.
9. Eating for good luck is a popular tradition in cultures around the world. Try 12 grapes at midnight (Spain), donuts (Holland) or black-eyed peas (American South). And of course in our household, sauerkraut on New Year’s day, cooked by my mom since I can’t even stomach the smell.
10. The popular New Year's song, Auld Lang Syne, translates to "old long ago." Here, the first verse and chorus is translated into modern English courtesy of the website, Rampant Scotland.
Should old acquaintances be forgotten
And never be remembered?
Should old acquaintances be forgotten
and days long ago.
Chorus:
For days long ago, my dear,
For days long ago
We'll drink a cup of kindness yet
For days long ago!
And surely you'll have your pint tankard
And surely I'll have mine.
WhenI hear Auld Lang Syne it makes me sad. This year, I put my favorite version of Ault Lang Syne on our Christmas cd, by Mairi Campbell & Dave Francis. It’s simply beautiful.
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
