New Year's Eve
December/28/2023
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article is about the Gregorian calendar. For other calendars, see New Year. For other uses, see New Year's Eve (disambiguation).
In the Gregorian calendar, New Year's Eve, also known as Old Year's Day or Saint Sylvester's Day in many countries, is the evening or the entire day of the last day of the year, 31 December. The last day of the year is commonly referred to as “New Year's Eve”. In many countries, New Year's Eve is celebrated with dancing, eating, drinking, and watching or lighting fireworks. Some Christians attend a watchnight service. The celebrations generally go on past midnight into New Year's Day, 1 January.
The Line Islands (part of Kiribati), Samoa and Tonga, in the Pacific Ocean, are the first places to welcome the New Year, while American Samoa, Baker Island and Howland Island (part of the United States Minor Outlying Islands) are among the last.
This article is about the Gregorian calendar. For other calendars, see New Year. For other uses, see New Year's Eve (disambiguation).
In the Gregorian calendar, New Year's Eve, also known as Old Year's Day or Saint Sylvester's Day in many countries, is the evening or the entire day of the last day of the year, 31 December. The last day of the year is commonly referred to as “New Year's Eve”. In many countries, New Year's Eve is celebrated with dancing, eating, drinking, and watching or lighting fireworks. Some Christians attend a watchnight service. The celebrations generally go on past midnight into New Year's Day, 1 January.
The Line Islands (part of Kiribati), Samoa and Tonga, in the Pacific Ocean, are the first places to welcome the New Year, while American Samoa, Baker Island and Howland Island (part of the United States Minor Outlying Islands) are among the last.
United States
Crowds gather in Times Square to attend the ball drop at midnight each year
In the United States, New Year's Eve is celebrated via a variety of social gatherings, and large-scale public events such as concerts, fireworks shows, and "drops"—an event inspired by time balls where an item is lowered or raised over the course of the final minute of the year.
Drop events are typically patterned after the annual "ball drop" held at New York City's Times Square, where a 5,400-kilogram (11,875 lb), 3.7-metre-diameter (12 ft) ball is lowered down a 21-metre-high (70 ft) pole on the roof of One Times Square. The event has been held since 1907, and the ball itself—which is adorned with Waterford Crystal panels and an LED lighting system—has been displayed atop the building year-round since 2009. Drop events often use either a ball in imitation of Times Square, or items that represent local culture or history (such as Atlanta's Peach Drop, which reflects Georgia's identity as the "Peach State").
New York City and Times Square serve as the focal point for national media coverage of the holiday. Bandleader Guy Lombardo and his band—The Royal Canadians—were well known for their annual broadcast from New York City. Their signature performance of "Auld Lang Syne" at midnight helped make the standard synonymous with the holiday. Beginning on radio in 1929, Lombardo moved to CBS television from 1956 to 1976, adding coverage of the ball drop.
Following Lombardo's death, Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve (which premiered for 1973 on NBC, and moved to ABC for 1975) became the dominant New Year's Eve special on U.S. television—especially among younger viewers—with Dick Clark having anchored New Year's coverage (including New Year's Rockin' Eve and the one-off ABC 2000 Today) for 32 straight years. After Clark suffered a stroke in December 2004, Regis Philbin guest hosted the 2005 edition. Due to a lingering speech impediment brought upon by the stroke, Clark retired as host and was succeeded by Ryan Seacrest for 2006, but continued making limited appearances on the special until his death in 2012.
Other notable New Year's events are held in New York besides those in Times Square; since 1984, the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in Manhattan has hosted the annual "New Year's Eve Concert for Peace", which was founded in 1984 by composer Leonard Bernstein. The New York Road Runners hosts a "Midnight Run" event at Central Park, which features a fireworks show and a footrace around the park that begins at midnight.
Other notable celebrations include the Las Vegas Strip's "America's Party", which consists of a ticketed concert event at the Fremont Street Experience, and a public fireworks show at midnight that is launched from various casino resorts on the Strip. Nashville has typically held concerts featuring country music performers and a music note drop; since 2021, the festivities have been televised by CBS as part of the special New Year's Eve Live: Nashville's Big Bash.
Los Angeles, a city long without a major public New Year celebration, held an inaugural gathering in Downtown's newly completed Grand Park to celebrate the arrival of 2014. The event included food trucks, art installations, and culminated with a projection mapping show on the side of Los Angeles City Hall near midnight. The inaugural event drew over 25,000 spectators and participants. For 2016, Chicago introduced an event known as Chi-Town Rising. Since 2014–15, musician Pitbull has hosted a New Year's Eve concert at Miami's Bayfront Park (which was initially televised as a New Year's special on Fox, Pitbull's New Year's Revolution, until 2017–18).
Major theme parks also hold New Year's celebrations; Disney theme parks, such as Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando, Florida and Disneyland in Anaheim, California, are traditionally the busiest around the Christmas and New Year's holidays.
