Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - New Year’s Traditions (Encore)

Episode Date: December 31, 2024

Every year, people around the world ring in the New Year.  How they do this, however, can differ radically from place to place. New Year’s traditions tend to be even more varied than Christmas celebrations. As with Christmas, traditions involve drinks, food, and rituals, but usually with a lot more noise and staying up later.  Learn more about traditions surrounding how we ring in the New Year on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Sponsors Mint Mobile Cut your wireless bill to 15 bucks a month at mintmobile.com/eed MasterClass Get up to 50% off at MASTERCLASS.COM/EVERYWHERE Quince Go to quince.com/daily for 365-day returns, plus free shipping on your order! ButcherBox New users that sign up for ButcherBox will receive 2 lbs of grass-fed ground beef in every box for the lifetime of their subscription + $20 off your first box when you use code daily at checkout! Subscribe to the podcast!  https://everything-everywhere.com/everything-everywhere-daily-podcast/ -------------------------------- Executive Producer: Charles Daniel Associate Producers: Ben Long & Cameron Kieffer   Become a supporter on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/everythingeverywhere Update your podcast app at newpodcastapps.com Discord Server: https://discord.gg/UkRUJFh Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/everythingeverywhere/ Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/everythingeverywheredaily Twitter: https://twitter.com/everywheretrip Website: https://everything-everywhere.com/  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The following is an encore presentation of Everything Everywhere Daily. Once every 12 months, people around the world ring in the new year. How they do this, however, can differ radically from place to place. New Year's traditions tend to be even more varied than Christmas traditions. As with Christmas, traditions involve drinks, food, and rituals, but usually with a lot more noise and staying up later. Learn more about the tradition surrounding how we ring in the new year on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night. And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR. It would be impossible to cover every single New Year's tradition just because there are so many of them. So in this episode, I'll try to go over some of the world's biggest and most interesting New Year's traditions. And we might as well start with one of the most famous New Year's traditions, the dropping of the ball in Times Square in New York.

The tradition is pretty simple. There is a large ball attached to a pole on the top of the one-time square building. At 11.59 p.m., the ball starts to move down the pole, and at midnight, the ball hits the bottom to welcome in the new year. The first ball drop took place on December 31, 1907. It was arranged by Adolf Ox, the owner of the New York Times, who also owned the building back then. Ox devised the event to replace a fireworks display that had previously taken place. In the 125 years since the ball drop began, it has been held every year, save for 1942 and 1943 due to blackout restrictions during World War II. People did gather in Times Square during the war, but they just observed a moment of silence,

followed by church bells. There have been four different balls that have been used in ball drop history. The first ball in 1907 was 5 feet or 1.5 meters in diameter and had 100 incandescent light bulbs attached and it was made of iron and wood. The second ball was built in 1920. That one had the same dimensions, but it was made solely out of iron. The third ball was used for the first time in 1956. The new ball was slightly larger at 6 feet in diameter and made out of aluminum. The ball was modified several times and the drop was finally computerized in the 1990s, so it was synced with the atomic clock run by the National Institute of time. A fourth ball was introduced for the year 2000. This was roughly the same size and was built by Waterford Crystal. A fifth ball was introduced in 2007. It was again six feet or 1.8 meters in

diameter, but this ball was filled with 9,576 LED lights. The ball was short-lived and replaced by a huge ball in 2009. This current ball is 12 feet or 3.7 meters in diameter, weighs almost 12,000 pounds, or 5,000 kilograms, and there are 32,256 LED lights inside that can produce over 16 million colors. Prior to the pandemic, about 100,000 people would pack Time Square to participate live. Another city with a huge New Year's Eve celebration is Edinburgh, Scotland, and the festival is known as Hogmanee. Hogmanee is actually celebrated throughout Scotland, but the biggest festivities by far are held in Edinburgh. The origins of the festival date back centuries, so far that, that no one is really sure where the tradition started.

One reason why Hogmanee is so popular in Scotland is that celebrating Christmas was banned, either legally or culturally, for almost 400 years after the Protestant Reformation. Hogmany in Edinburgh is a giant street party that consists of bands, fireworks, and most noteworthy of all, a large torchlight procession. It's one of the biggest New Year's festivals in the world,

and if you haven't seen photos or videos of Hogmany, I suggest you take a look as it's quite the event. And speaking of Scotland, it's the origin of one of the biggest New Year's traditions, the song Old Lang Zine. The lyrics for the song comes from the Scots-language poem written by the poet Robert Burns back in 1788. However, he admitted that the song dates back centuries earlier. The term Old Lang-Zine literally translates to Old Long Sense, but a more natural translation would be something like Days Gone By or Old Times.

The song became popularized by the Canadian big band leader Guy Lombardo, who began performing it on New Year's Eve back in 1929. His 1947 recording of the song has become the definitive version of it and it's what's played in Times Square. Moving on from Scotland, perhaps the biggest New Year's fireworks display in the world is held in Sydney, Australia. Sydney lights up the entire harbor with a huge setup on the Harbor bridge itself. Many people actually get into positions a day in advance just so they get good seats. I actually attended the 2014 New Year's Eve fireworks in Sydney and got a spot really close to the Harbor Bridge, and it was by far the best fireworks display that I've seen in my life. Other cities with major fireworks displays include Rio de Janeiro,

which does it over Copacabana Beach, London, which has fireworks over Big Ben and the River Thames, and of course, Disney World. A unique fireworks display takes place at the Birch Khalifa, the world's tallest building in Dubai. The entire building is set up with fireworks, and the display makes it look like a giant 2,722-foot sparkler. They have a similar New Year's display at Taipei 101, which was formerly the tallest building in the world. In Ecuador, their celebrations also involve fire, but not necessarily fireworks.

One of the big Ecuadorian traditions is to burn figures and effigy. Burning the figures is considered a way of burning away the old year. Most of the figures are celebrities and politicians who are notable during the previous year, and burning the figures isn't necessarily a sign of disliking the person like you would if you were burning a figure in effigy at a protest. The tradition actually started during an epidemic that took place in the city of Guayaquil in 1895. They had to burn the bodies of infected people in their coffins along with all their clothing.

Many of the New Year's traditions around the world aren't as big as festivals or fireworks displays. Some are rather small traditions. One I experienced firsthand was the tradition in Spain of eating grapes at the stroke of midnight. According to the tradition, you are supposed to eat one grape at each chime of the the clock at midnight for a total of 12 grapes. When I was in Spain during New Year's, everyone told me about the 12 grapes, so I went along with it. It was just one of those things you sort of did. I later found out that the origin of the tradition actually dates back to the 19th century. Grape growers around the city of Alacante wanted to sell their remaining inventory

of grapes at the end of the year. So they began promoting the tradition of eating grapes at the stroke of midnight. In parts of Scotland in England, it's considered good luck if a dark-haired man is the first person to set foot in your house in the new year. When I was in high school, my debate partner's family was from Northern England, and one year I was the first person to walk through the front door of their house, and they noted it was good luck because I had brown hair. That was when I had hair. Supposedly, the tradition dates back to when the Vikings were invading Britain. If a man with light hair came through your door, it was probably a bad sign. In Greece, there's a tradition of smashing pomegranates. Right after midnight, you are supposed to take a pomegranate,

and smash it against the door of your house. The pomegranate is considered a symbol of life and fortune, and it goes all the way back to ancient Greece. In Denmark, some people will break plates against the front door of their homes of friends and family. In Colombia, if you walk around your block with an empty suitcase, it means the next year will be filled with travel and adventure. In Turkey, some people put salt on their doorsteps to keep evil spirits away. In the Philippines, you're supposed to eat 12 spherical fruits.

And in Naples, some people throw their furniture out the window of their house to get a fresh start. I should note that many of these traditions are just that. They're traditional. You might live in one of these countries and not even engage in any of these practices. In the United States, one of the biggest traditions has become college football bowl games. The first college football ball game was the 1901 Tournament of Roses East West game between Michigan and Stanford, which was played on January 1st.

The game later became known as the Rose Bowl, which was named after the stadium it was played in, which was named because of its shape. Eventually, other games were scheduled, which were also played after the regular season, in warm weather cities, either on New Year's Eve or New Year's Day. The Big Five bowl games, in addition to the Rose Bowl,

which began in the 1930s were the Sugar Bowl, the Cotton Bowl, the Orange Bowl, and the Sun Bowl. The number of bowl games kept growing to eight in the 1950s and 60s, 11 by 1970, and just kept getting larger. Today, there are over 40. Most bowl games aren't even played around New Year's Day, anymore, but the most important ones still are. The entire college bowl system is probably the subject of a future episode. I want to end with one tradition which has been around for

centuries and still appears in depictions of the New Year, Father Time and Baby New Year. You'll often see Father Time in editorial cartoons and New Year's party favors. The depiction might actually be the most ancient of all New Year's traditions. Father Time actually dates back to the Greek god Chronos. Chronos was one of the original titans. and the father of the first generation of Olympian gods. He was the Greek embodiment of the concept of time, and was often depicted holding a sickle. The Romans ripped off the idea of chronos and repositioned him as the god's Saturn.

In the Middle Ages, Father Time was often paired with the Grim Reaper, who was the personification of death. Today, depictions of Father Time usually have him wearing robes and carrying an hourglass to depict the passage of time, and he's usually very old with a beard. He will be wearing a sash with the outgoing year-on. it. And likewise, he's usually paired with Baby New Year, who is an infant wearing a sash with the New Year on it. Oddly enough, you never see a middle-aged father time in the middle of the summer wearing shorts with socks while mowing his lawn. The New Year is a time for celebrating. It's

very similar to the solstice in that it's a global, mostly non-religious celebration that's held around the world. As with the solstice, how it's celebrated is different almost everywhere. Regardless of how you celebrate the New Year, whether you're eating grapes, smashing pomegranates watching football, I hope you all have a very great year. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Benji Long and Cameron Kiever. I want to give a big shout out to everyone who supports the show over on Patreon, including the show's producers. Your support helps me put out a show every single day. And also, Patreon is currently the only place where Everything Everywhere Daily merchandise is available to the top tier of

supporters. If you'd like to talk to other listeners of the show and members of the Completionist Club, you can join the Everything Everywhere Daily Facebook group or Discord server. Links to everything are in the show notes.