![How Americans celebrate the New Year [galerie d’images]](https://i0.wp.com/share.lab.prod.getusinfo.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/rose_parade_new_year_GettyImages-1237498765-2-1024x512.jpg?fit=%2C&ssl=1 "How Americans celebrate the New Year [galerie d’images]")
In the United States, New Year’s Eve is celebrated in many ways. Traditions vary from region to region, according to the waves of immigration that have occurred there, and sometimes from one neighborhood to another, in cities of all sizes where different ethnic communities have settled. Other New Year’s customs, such as the famous descent of the ball in Times Square, New York, have other origins, particularly maritime.
And, of course, many Americans celebrate at private parties or in public places. Here are a few examples of how Americans welcome the New Year across the country.
‘Sushi’ performer, in a giant heeled shoe that drops at the stroke of midnight during the ‘Red Shoe Drop’ party, celebrates the New Year with crowds gathered on Duval Street in Key West, Florida December 31, 2019. Key West hosts other New Year’s celebrations, including waterfront fireworks and the lowering of a huge seashell (symbol of the Florida Keys archipelago) on the roof of a city bar.
Visitors from across the country, and even around the world, join New Yorkers on New Year’s Eve to watch a lighted ball descend from a flagpole in Times Square, until the stroke of midnight. Here, newly engaged Spanish couple Irene Mayoral and Gerald Nuell kiss under a shower of confetti in Times Square on 1and January.
The “time balls” have maritime origins dating back to the 19th century.and century. Installed in ports, they descended from the masts every day at noon. “Ships used the hands to set their clocks to local time,” says the business news site Insiders*. The downfall of New York’s New Year’s Ball began more than a century ago, in 1907.
These New Year’s revelers prepare to take an ice-cold dip at Boston’s M Street Beach on New Year’s Day 2022. The Boston tradition, which dates back to 1904, is a ritual carried on in similar forms across the country. According to tradition, swimmers “wipe the slate clean” and start over by diving into the water on the 1stand January of each year.
Some people don’t stay in the water for long. Others practice this bath routine daily, despite the freezing temperatures.
These merry kids take part in the “Mummers” parade in Philadelphia on January 2nd. This popular festival, the “Mummers Parade”, has been held for over 120 years to celebrate the New Year. About 10,000 participants, divided by theme, parade through the streets of the city. This form of comic pantomime was introduced to Philadelphia by Swedish, German, and English immigrants in the late 1700s.and century.
The Rose Parade, also known as the Tournament of Roses Parade, features lavishly decorated floats, marching bands and groups of horses at the cobbler.
An iconic New Year’s Eve tradition, the parade always precedes the Rose Bowl Finals, college football, and sometimes takes place on January 2 if New Year’s Eve falls on a Sunday. The parade was first organized in 1890 and was only interrupted during World War II in 1942, 1943 and 1945 and during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021.
The theme of the 2023 Rose Parade is ‘Turning the Corner’, a nod to the new year that offers an opportunity to make a fresh start with hope and joy.
*in English
