What Are You Doing New Year's Eve?: Traditions and Celebrations

A Time with Family

"I'm from outside Milwaukee, WI, where I have lived all my life with my parents and younger brother Kyle. We have some close family friends, the Fischers, whom we would spend every New Year's. As a child, I looked forward to playing board games, watching movies and eat snacks with my pseudo cousins until the countdown started. Then we would celebrate the New Year with hugs and sparkling juice and go to bed. Even when the Fischers moved to Iowa City, IA over ten years ago, we kept the New Year's tradition by taking turns traveling back and forth between our homes to be together on New Year's. Today, us kids are done with school working real jobs, or finishing college, married or with significant others, and we don't have to drink sparkling juice at midnight anymore, but we still look forward to our New Year's tradition." Allison M.

"We let the kids stay up and talk about the best things that happened this year and what they hope for in the next year. We share bubbly (grape juice for the kids), and then we still watch the ball drop in Times Square." Katrina R.

"Our family always has oyster stew (a tradition from my wife’s family) and 7-Up punch with lime sherbet (from my family). Then we make predictions for the next year, guessing who will be on the Honor Roll, who will have a new car, who will be elected president. We’ve got past year’s predictions from 25 years back, which is fun." Rob K.