New Year Eve

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Do you watch the ball drop on NYE?

I usually do. I have some sparkling grape juice to go with the occasion since I can't have alcohol.

Usually we do, if there's a TV around and they get ABC. We don't watch the whole thing though, nobody really likes any of the musical acts they have on.

I like to watch the pea, I mean the ball drop.

No idea what that is, too lazy to google. I go out for a walk near midnight and watch fireworks instead.

No, because i live in Sweden and that is not the tradition.

Our tradition is to get drunk, watch fireworks go boom and send so many text messages to each other so the mobile phone system crashes at 23:59:59.

Where I live they celebrate the New Year with a mass brawl on the bridge in the middle of the village. I don't know if the tradition is that they actually do it, or just talk about doing it.
In any case, I'll be tucked up in bed by 10pm with my earplugs firmly rammed in.

I watch the Sydney NYE fireworks on TV when Sydney reaches midnight. Then an hour later my part of the country enters the new year ... which it has just done now.

Happy New Year in 2018, everyone!

Just been watching Sydney fireworks on tv in rainy old uk... looks amazing.
Happy New Year to you, too.

This still gets me, 17-soon-to-be-18 years later. This is the Tour D'Eiffel Feu D'Artifice 2000.
They had it timed to the exact second. Incredible pyrotechnic engineering... Vive La France!

For anyone who hasn't seen this previously:the video starts a couple minutes before midnight, so you can see the fireworks first at ground level, then at each tower "level", then ascending the tower to the countdown, then the wonderful display at midnight on the dot.

(US East Coast here, fourteen+ hours to go yet.)

I don't believe in holidays. Each day is just that: a day. I'd be much more impressed with New Year's if it actually occurred on one of solstices or equinoxes. As it stands it's just another product of human imagination marketed for social control since there's no underlying reason for it falling where it does other than 'belief'. I can make a strong case for New Year's on either solstice due to physics, natural weather patterns, etc, the only defense for New Year's sitting where it does is: because everybody else is doing it. Sure, it's a minor point, but it's still a valid point, and when one starts adding up all the 'minor' points of social control it ends up being quite a ledger, generally much larger than the individual gets to invest in him/herself. Consider this: if you live to 60 in the United States that means you're expected to take a day off from whatever you're doing on 1. New Year's, 2. Fourth of July, 3.Thanksgiving, 4. Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanza/etc. 4*60 = 240 days of your life, or 2/3rds of a full year of your life just to zone out and accept as fact the social belief tied to each holiday. That's on top of the 8-5 you run on weekdays for the benefit of society and the taxes you pay for the benefit of society. So instead of celebrating New Year's, perhaps try celebrating self determination and freedom by reading the Zhuangzi instead.

The only time I watched any televised New Year's Eve events was in 1999, because that had been such a big screaming deal because of all the heavy sensationalism and alarmism about Y2K. Naturally, we now have a lot MORE to worry about than computers globally crashing.

Of course, I'm sure there will be a lot of televised events of people getting stinking drunk and drunk-driving and alcohol-related death and human behavior at its absolute worst tomorrow. And maybe a people getting blown up with fireworks as well. Interrupted every three minutes with repulsive 2-minute ads for quack-doctor weight loss products. Ugly New Year, everyone.

I used to buy sparking grape juice, I like it that it came in a wine bottle, I didn’t get it this year, I lost my bottle top opener.

I always watched ABC, didn’t like Mariah Carey drunken performance last year, ABC invite her this year Kelly Clarkson is performing

I used to watch it on MTV but I haven't paid much attention to that since I graduated high-skewl & got a computer & net.

Well, it occurs at the end of the Gregorian calendar, which was created so that the equinox and solstices would occur on the proper date...before that, everything centered a bit more on the lunar cycles. January and February were always considered to just be "winter", so it seems as good a time as any to end/begin the year.