Four thousand years of fresh starts
The oldest New Year festival we know about was held in ancient Babylon around 4,000 years ago. It was called Akitu and took place in spring, when the barley was sown, and lasted twelve days. People made promises to their gods to pay their debts and return things they had borrowed, which some historians see as the ancestor of the New Year RESOLUTION. Studies of modern resolutions suggest most are broken within a few months. Not everyone celebrates in January even now. Nowruz, the Persian New Year, begins at the spring equinox and has been celebrated for about 3,000 years by some three hundred million people from Iran to Central Asia, and Ethiopia's New Year falls in September.
The year has not always started on the first of JANUARY. Julius Caesar fixed it there when he reformed the Roman CALENDAR in 46 BC, but much of medieval Europe started the year in spring instead. England only moved New Year's Day back to 1 January in 1752, a change our history page explains; the old spring New Year still shapes the British tax year.
Midnight takes twenty-six hours to go round
Because the world is divided into time zones, New Year arrives in stages. The first people to see it are on Kiribati's Line Islands in the Pacific, and the last inhabited places are American Samoa and nearby islands, twenty-five hours later; the uninhabited Baker Island is later still, making twenty-six hours from first to last. Sydney's harbour FIREWORKS are among the first big displays of the night, watched around the world while most of it is still at breakfast.
In New York, a glowing ball has been lowered down a pole in Times Square at MIDNIGHT since the end of 1907, after the city banned fireworks there. The BALL DROP copies the time balls once dropped at ports so ships could set their clocks. The first ball was made of iron and wood and lit with a hundred light bulbs; today's is covered in thousands of crystal triangles.
Grapes, coal and smashed plates
In Spain, people eat TWELVE grapes at midnight, one for each chime of the clock, which is harder than it sounds; the custom took off in the early 1900s. In Scotland, where New Year is called Hogmanay, the first person to step over the doorstep after midnight, the first-footer, should ideally be a tall, dark stranger carrying a lump of coal, some shortbread or salt for luck. In Denmark, people save chipped plates all year and smash them on friends' doorsteps, and jump off chairs at midnight to leap into the new year.
Much of the English-speaking world then links arms to sing Auld Lang Syne, a Scots song whose words few people know; our poets page covers the man who wrote them down.
The COUNTDOWN on New Year's EVE ends with BELLS ringing out the old year, a TOAST and a CHEERS with CHAMPAGNE or something fizzy, a SPARKLER, CONFETTI, STREAMERS and GLITTER, paper HATS and HORNS, WISHES for the year ahead, and a reason to CELEBRATE at a PARTY.