Our New Years Day is not usually as big as other holidays. But our family is usually together as we watch the ball drop and we usually have some kind of drink that we all toast together as 12:00 a.m. arrives. I always enjoy this last minute with my family together. The week after New Years I take time to taking the tree down and cleaning up fom Christmas. Does anyone make Jan 1st a big holiday? Are there any traditions with this day into the New Year?
The Scottish tradition at New Year )called first footing) is for a dark haired man to visit you at the last stroke of midnight carrying a bottle of whisky, a lump of coal and a black bun (a very heavy fruit cake encased in pastry.) The whisky is brought to ensure that you always have something to drink, the black bun so that you're never without food, and the coal that you'll always have heating in your home throughout the coming year. :-D
We usually just stay home and have a special dinner. The kids try to stay up to midnight and have a toast with us, but so far they have always fallen asleep. Maybe this year they will see midnight. January 1st is usually a lazy day. January 2nd we take down our Christmas tree and decorations.
We've already stocked up on our fireworks. The entire family will meet for a big turkey dinner at my oldest sister-in-law's house, that is 18 people! After dinner we laze about for a bit. The bigger children (18 and 19 now) will take the smaller ones out for a bit of pre-midnight fireworks joy, because some of them will fall asleep, no matter how hard they try to stay awake. At about 23.30 the show will begin. The entire sky will be covered in fabulous colours and shapes, and the noise is deafening! We toast in champers or sodas around midnight, and keep on with the fireworks until there's nothing left. New Year's Day is spent yawning and tidying up the debris. January 6th is our clear-out-Christmas-day.
Eileen that is an awesome tradition. Does anyone actually come to the house with all that to wish all good fortune. When i lived in America i heard why most people eat sourkraut and sausages at midnight. green (sourkraut is cabbage)for the money, an sausages for the "never go hungry" an then blackeyed peas are served also for the health part. (something like that, please correct this if its wrong) Here in Norway we don't do nothing much. My husband an i take a sauna, as a way of getting rid of the old an bringing in the new. drink champangne an give each other massages. Just a way of relaxing an bringing in the New Year with a positive attidude. then we come out in our robes an watch the neighbors across the fjørd shoot their fireworks.
Sadly Biita the younger generation seem to have little, or no, interst in the old traditions nowadays. New Year seems to be more of a time to turn up with a few cans of beer at a friends house and get as drunk as you can, as quickly as you can, after New Year has struck. :-?
Dang Eileen thats too bad. I think that sounded really cool, i mean can you imagine even if a person didn't have all that he is supposed to deliver, but just stopped and entered, i bet by the time he got to the end of a street he would probably have to crawl his way back up. lol. (dang that was a long sentence)At least be staggering a little. Not to mention probably be full from everyone wanting to give him a bite to eat. Thats just to bad. Sad the way traditions die, for the comercializimn of the world. (geez i slaughterd that word too. commercializm? can't type today)
Most often we spend it quietly at home especially the last 10 years while we were in an extreme drought until this year. Our neighbors believe in setting off fireworks for every holiday ignoring the fact that they are illegal inside the city limits, especially during a time of drought....we wanted to be home in case a stray bottle rocket or something started a fire. The southern tradition is to have a spoonfull of Blackeyed peas as the first thing you eat in the new year to assure good fortune/health and happiness in the new year. And I must say, the years we have remembered to eat them have been better than those when we forgot. When I was a child, every New Years day my Mom would tell me that what you do on New Years day will be what you spend most of your time doing thru the year. But, she said that when she was telling me it was time to clean out my closet, dresser drawers and under the bed. I think it was just part of her effort to get me to keep my room clean.
I'm new to GS, and am really enjoying the interactions between members from other countries. Gardening can sure bring people together! In our neck of the woods, we drink Tom and Jerry's (a hot drink with rum and brandy) and get together for a round-robin with our neighbors. Most years we can snowmobile from house to house, but there's not enough snow this year.
I never can stay awake for midnight any more so I just give up and go to bed about 9:30 or 10 pm. New Years Day is spent eating and watching american college football! And some sleeping too if the game is real bad!
A lot of people eat pig's feet and saurkraut and in the southern states they also have black eyed peas. Sourkraut is like eating cabbage and topping it off with a gallon of vinegar and salt!
We don't really have anything 'special' for a dinner on New Years Day. We just stay together as the ball drops and toast the New Year in. Droopy, your fireworks sound like so much fun. Again thanks for everyones post.
This year if the first time in YEARS that DH and I have gone anywhere. We're usually in bed by 10. It's he(( getting old New years day is spent at his cousins house, eating Ham and cabbage... taste testing wine and visiting with a house full of friends and reletives who float in and out all day. It's a GOOD way to start off a new year :-D
