The completion of the Earth’s rotation around the sun marks a new year with new beginnings. The new year is celebrated all around the world and Brittanica says that these celebrations began as early as 2000 BCE in Ancient Mesopotamia. The night before the first day of the new year, New Year’s Eve, can be considered the biggest night of the year with its many traditions and festivities to celebrate the coming of the start of a new year. Some traditions include attending a New Year’s Eve Party, sharing a toast, eating twelve grapes under a table at midnight, watching colorful fireworks, or watching the New Year’s Eve Ball in New York City drop at midnight.
The dropping of the New Year’s Eve Ball in New York City’s Time Square is one of the biggest and most well-known New Year’s Eve traditions. According to the Official Times Square Website, New Year’s Eve celebrations in Times Square began in the year 1904, but it was not until 1907 when the first drop of the New Year’s Eve Ball occurred. Freshman Charlotte Gregory remarks, “I thought that the New Year’s Eve Ball Drop had not been around for a while, and I just found out that it has been around since 1907 which was so long ago. It is crazy how some traditions like the dropping of the New Year’s Eve Ball have been around for as long as a century.” The Ball descends on a flagpole atop One Times Square, a skyscraper on Times Square, which was first built to be the New York Times headquarters. The descent of the New Year’s Eve Ball has occurred every year since 1907 with the exception of the years 1942 and 1943 because of the wartime “dimout” of lights in New York City. The descent of the Ball begins at 11:59 p.m., counting down the final seconds of the year.
This spectacle is viewed by hundreds of thousands of people in person at Times Square and it is also watched by an estimate of over one billion people across the world. Freshman Grace Whiting shares her family’s traditions on New Years Eve and her reactions to this history, “Every New Years Eve, friends and family come over to my house and we have lots of food and the TV is on full blast. I could not believe how long ago this tradition of New Years Eve and the Ball dropping started, it feels like it would be a new more modern tradition.”
There have been seven versions of the New Year’s Eve Ball, and the current Ball is being retired after its final descent signaling the end of the year 2024 and the beginning of the year 2025. This Ball will be placed in the Times Travel Museum at One Times Square for people to view.
