New Years!
New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day can be a magical time for us! It’s filled with celebration, joy, and new beginnings. Family and friends gather and there are parades to watch on T.V. The college football championships called bowl games are televised across the world. In many places it's a winter wonderland with sparkling snow, and fireworks that light the sky. It is also one of the few times that even the youngest kids are allowed to stay up until midnight. No matter how you celebrate, it is the end of something old and the beginning of something new to come.
The Island of Kiritimati is located in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and lies just to the east of the International Date Line, which makes it one of the first inhabited places on Earth to welcome the New Year. The International Dateline runs from the North Pole to the South Pole. It is an imaginary line on the Earth that officially marks the beginning of one day and the end of another. On one side of the dateline if it is Sunday, it will be Monday on the other. What makes this fun is that the new year holiday literally lasts 24 hours.
Most modern places throw parties to mark the beginning of the new year. One world-wide tradition involves counting down the final seconds of the year until the clock strikes midnight. This is usually followed by cheers, music, and fireworks. Some places even have drone shows to go with their fireworks. Another modern tradition is to make resolutions. These resolutions have to do with making ourselves better people. For years, the resolutions were promises made to the Gods in return for good crops. It was around this time that Father Time and the New Years baby became a thing. Father Time represents the passing of time over the last year and the baby is the birth of the new year to come. You can see these ancient symbols now as posters, in movies and as cartoons.
There are a lot of traditional foods that people eat on New Years. Some of the old traditions began thousands of years ago, and others are 200-400 years old. Greeks have a bread called Vasilopita and inside the bread is a coin or some other prize. When the bread is cut, whoever gets the coin in their piece is supposed to have good luck.
About 1,500 years ago Scandinavian countries started pickling a small fish called herring. The preserved fish became a popular food during the cold winter months both for food and a commodity to be traded.