New Year’s Eve is the night of December 31. “Eve” means the night before a big holiday, like in the word “evening,” so December 24th is Christmas Eve. (“Eve” is also a woman’s name; according to the Bible, she was the first woman on earth, wife to Adam.) New Year’s Eve is basically the end of the so-called “holiday season,” the time stretching from Thanksgiving to New Year’s Day. (Some would now say the “holiday season” in the US starts on Halloween, October 31.) Hear more about Christmas and the “holiday season” here.
Since New Year’s falls exactly one week after Christmas, this is a special time of year. For example, practically all schools and colleges are closed during this period. Most US colleges are closed for about one month, from early December to early/mid January. Most colleges have their fall semester exams before the Christmas (winter) break, so students returning in January start the spring semester. All K-12 schools are closed for Christmas too, usually for about two weeks or so. Most classes resume on January 2. This is why the online classes at DreyerCoaching.com also pause for about two weeks at this time each year, and restart on January 2.
New Year’s Eve is such a big holiday, most businesses close that day, or at least close early. For example, most grocery stores that are open 24/7 all year, close only twice a year: over Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, and again on New Year’s Eve until the morning of New Year’s Day, January 1.
Americans celebrate New Year’s Eve in many ways. Some prefer to stay at home, just with family, and have a quiet evening. Others like to invite some friends over, or else go out with friends. Many people like to stay up till midnight and “ring in” the new year. Some families like to stop right at midnight, hold hands, and pray as the new year starts, asking for God’s guidance and blessing in the new year. For many people, drinking alcohol is a big part of New Year’s Eve. While some people must think it’s fun to hit the bottle, we should also remember that drinking and driving is very dangerous, and can hurt or even kill people. Plus, it seems to me, it is better to wake up on the first morning of the new year feeling good and fresh, instead of having a bad headache or hangover.
Since the world is round and has 24 time zones, different parts of the world celebrate at different times. For us here in Virginia, USA, we are 13 hours behind East Asia, and six or seven hours behind Europe, so if we check the news around lunch time, we’ll see news reports of New Year’s Eve fireworks in places like Australia, Hong Kong, or Taiwan, and around dinner time, we’ll see celebrations from London, Berlin or Paris.
Here is a video of some New Year’s Eve celebrations in Asia! Notice how beautiful the fireworks in Hong Kong are– you can enjoy them in the sky AND reflecting on the water of Victoria Harbor!
My wife and I had a remarkable New Year’s Eve 2016, welcoming 2017, on board a small boat in Hong Kong’s famous Victoria Harbor. You can practice your listening and hear the story here. Check out some of the images from that beautiful night, below.
One iconic New Year’s celebration is watching the ball drop in Times Square in New York City. Starting on New Year’s Eve 1907 to welcome 1908, there has been a ball drop slowly from a pole to welcome the new year each December, except for 1942 and 1943, because of blackouts for World War II. Some report that more than 1 billion people watch this on TV, and thousands crowd into Times Square that day, to get a spot to watch it. Since the crowds are so huge, people have to go early that day to get a spot, and if you leave, you won’t get your space back!
You can watch a video of the 2017 Ball Drop here. Listen for the traditional New Year’s Eve song, Auld Lang Syne, right at the stroke of midnight. Since the famous ball drop is in New York City, listen next for the famous Frank Sinatra song, New York, New York.
On New Year’s Eve, in addition to celebrating, many people think back on the past year, both the good and bad things that happened, and make plans for the new year just ahead!
To find out about the next day, New Year’s Day, read here!
Thanks for reading!
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