Why Celebrate New Year’s
New Year’s started as a way for people from long ago to give themselves hope. Winter is very long and often very dark. While experience tells people that it will get warm again and the sun will begin to shine for more of the day, it is sometimes hard to believe and remember in the middle of the winter. As a result, people use a New Year’s celebration (often in the middle of winter) as a way to renew their hope for the future.
As time passed, people around the world began to develop systems for tracking time. These systems are what we call calendars. Today, the calendar that is used around most of the world is Roman calendar. However, many people in different countries still celebrate the New Year at the traditional time for their culture.
A Noisy Holiday
While a hope for a new and better future is important, many people think it is just as important to celebrate the Old Year and send it off with a bang. People used to believe that as a year got older, evil spirits become more dangerous and stronger. In order to scare the evil spirits away so that the New Year can be born, people made a lot of noise to frighten the demons away.
Different people do different thing to make noise at New Year’s. Some people beat drums and pans, others blow horns or whistles, some ring church bells, some shoot fireworks off, and still others just yell and shout. In the Wild West, cowboys would go out into the street and shoot their pistols into the air.
Lights and Fires are Used at New Year’s
Bonfires are often used to say goodbye to the Old Year. The smoke represents the end of the Old Year.
In Russia, the New Year is celebrated in the spring and so they burn a straw doll that represents winter as a symbol of winter being over.
In Ecuador, a straw doll that looks like a man is burned along with a list of everyone’s faults. The doll is burned at midnight of the Old Year so that everyone can start the year fresh.
People from the Inuit tribe in Alaska, chase evil spirits into the fire when the sun finally shows its face again. (In Alaska, there are many days where the sun never rises and the entire day is dark like night).
Fortune Telling and the New Year
In New York city during the 1800’s, it was popular to have fortune tellers at New Year’s Eve parties. The fortune tellers would read tea leaves or use a crystal ball to try to predict events in the New Year.
Ancient Europeans known as druids would watch how the birds flew to see if it would tell them about the coming year.
In South America, Colombians put an egg in a glass of water and watch it. They think that by watching how it changes they can see how the New Year will be.
Reference
Bernhard, Emery. Happy New Year! ISBN 0-525-67532-9 (Lodestar Books, 1996)
More about New Year’s Celebrations
The Ways People in Different Countries Celebrate
New Year’s Celebrations for Children
