Wondering what folks do normally, as well as what you’re doing this particular year due to Covid or any other reason for changes.
From the time the kids were old enough to stay awake until midnight (elementary school years somewhere) we’ve played family games until 11:45pm or so, then turned on the TV for an official countdown from NYC coupled with our bubbly, which can be alcoholic or not pending the year. This year it’s not because DIL isn’t fond of alcholic drinks and the rest of us don’t care.
Everyone gets to throw their favorite game into a hat and what we play is randomly drawn until we run out of time. Any “leftover” games are played on New Year’s Day.
I love the tradition - as do our kids. We’ve never had to change it so far. I hope we never get too old to do it.
We had traditions when the kids were younger and living home. Appetizer food and we would paper roll and count the big jar of change we saved all year. Then we would decide NY’s Day a family use for the change - it would range from $100-$200 dollars.
Never been big on NY Eve. NO desire to watch any typical NY’s stuff or stay up until midnight. I’ll make something a little fun to eat while watching Netflix. Maybe homemade flatbread pizza. Maybe crab legs.
We usually have our good friends over for dinner and some bubbly, but this year they bailed out (snowy roads and omicron unpredictability). It will be just the two of us. I am in the process of making the traditional dinner spread with some modifications because I don’t want to drive up our icy hill to get some missing ingredients. But we have plenty of bubbly!
This year we’re going to watch Michigan (hopefully) roll over Georgia and save our traditional NYE dinner for New Year’s day as we’ll be too busy watching the game with S/BIL to be dealing with anything other than football food tomorrow. Go Blue!
Our tradition is to celebrate for each midnight where we’ve lived or live. Both of us grew up in EST, so we watch the Times Square ball drop. Then we celebrate CST, where we lived for 40 years (hopefully we can livestream WGN). Then we celebrate PST, including the new tradition of watching Seattle’s Space Needle fireworks virtually with son.
Historically we’ve hosted a big gathering for NYE. We make a ton of heavy appetizers and guests bring desserts to share. We all dress up. We were hoping to host a party this year but Covid… D has two friends coming over instead and I expect we’ll play games together after we eat (that’s what we did last year too) and I’ll fight to stay awake until midnight ; )
BC (Before Children, so LONG ago), we hosted a NYE party every year. After we had kids, we celebrated at home with the kids. We always had hats & noisemakers, ate junk food and drank sparkling grape juice. H set off some fireworks at midnight when the kids were older. It’s just been H & me for a number of years now, and we do a jigsaw puzzle. We got called out of town last year because H’s dad took a turn for the worse. We are looking forward to getting back to our puzzle routine this year - plus, hopefully watching UM win.
I don’t remember what we did when the kids were young!
The last several years we got together with a couple we are close friends with. Usually we would go out to dinner and then go back to either their house or ours and have some bubbly, play euchre and watch the Times Square countdown on TV. But…they moved this year.
This year H and I are lying low. We have some sparkling wine in the house so we will probably have a toast and try to stay up until midnight.
For 30 years, we have celebrated NewYears Eve and NewYears Day with the same three other couples plus one other friend. We were supposed to resume this year, but it’s cancelled again…not Covid related (although the one person had already indicated he wasn’t coming because he had been exposed).
So…the hosts will be taping the ball dropping and we will celebrate the arrival of 2022 together sometime in a couple of months…we hope. And because it will be taped, we can watch the ball come down at 10 instead of midnight.
DH and I will have a quiet evening here with some nice hot soup and an appetizer or two.
We usually don’t do a thing and I’m in bed by 10. This year I’m having 3 other couples and a few of their family members over. Heavy appetizers and lots of bubbly. Problem is it starts at 7:30 and I’m trying to figure out how to stay awake!
When the kids were younger, we’d sometimes go to a fireworks display in a larger city.
Tomorrow we were going to have crab imperial, but 2 stores we tried didn’t have crab, so we will have lobster instead.
We are lame here too. I’m an early riser and not a night owl. I usually use the night to take down and put away Xmas decorations. It’s the only way I’ll stay awake and it can help me from crying that Xmas is over.
This year will be especially sad since we just got back from vacation. I always have the blues afterwards. And older S went back home this afternoon, and I always am sad after that. And younger S’ GF is sick and not coming down and I’m sad about that. And younger S said he might go to a friend’s place out of town. I won’t stop him, but I’m sure if he goes I’ll be a bawling mess for most of the evening. Going to bed at 8 might be a good thing.
I’m surprised how many of y’all watch football. No one in our family watches it at all. We often watch the Rose Bowl Parade though and probably will tomorrow if we remember it in the morning.
As we learned many years ago, there is no Rose Bowl Parade - rather a Rose Parade and a Rose Bowl Game. It was easier to wake in time to watch the parade when we lived in Chicago.
I admit I occasionally make reference to a Macy’s Day Parade although there is no such thing.
I love football. We usually watch tons of it, but H has fallen out of love over the years. He can’t sit still long enough.
But I’m getting ready to watch a local kid shortly. His mom and I waddled the halls at work pregnant together. It’s been fun watching him grow. It would be wonderful if he (and not Alabama) won.
Go dawgs!
It was easier to wake in time to watch the parade when we lived in Chicago.