New Year’s Eve is a holiday that falls on the last day of the year — December 31.
There are many ways to celebrate New Year’s Eve. Some will reflect on the past year or look forward to the year ahead with new resolutions. Others may honor the day by attending a New Year’s Eve party.
However you choose to ring in the new year, you can learn more about the holiday by learning the answers to the following frequently asked questions about New Year’s Eve. Also, check out our quotes, toasts, resolutions, and captions.
When is New Year’s Eve?
New Year’s Eve is celebrated every December 31, the last day of the calendar year (to those who follow the traditional Gregorian calendar). The year-end holiday comes the day before New Year’s Day on January 1 of the new year.
What day is New Year’s Eve this year?
Curious about what day New Year’s Eve falls on in the coming years? Check out the chart below to find out.
FAQs
Here are some frequently asked questions with answers about the holiday.
What are other names for New Year’s Eve?
In some countries, New Year’s Eve is known as Old Year’s Day or Saint Sylvester’s Day.
What is the New Year’s Eve song?
The traditional song of New Year’s Eve is Auld Lang Syne by Robert Burns. In 1788 the Scottish poet wrote the poem Auld Lang Syne and teamed it up with the melody of a traditional folk song.
The tune is known worldwide as the theme of New Year’s Eve, but especially in English-speaking countries. It is traditionally played at midnight as a farewell to the old year.
For many years Auld Lang Syne was performed on New Year’s Eve in New York by Guy Lombardo and his orchestra. It became his signature song by the end of his career.
What are the New Year’s Eve customs?
Here are some common New Year’s Eve traditions and customs in the United States:
Make a New Year’s resolution – For the new year, you may choose to lose some weight, connect with old friends, read a book, or become a better person — there are many resolutions to which you can aspire.
Attend a New Year’s Eve party – You’ll find many party choices available for your New Year’s Eve celebration. Some parties are formal-dress affairs, but most will generally include noisemakers, confetti, funny hats, music, dancing, champagne, and toasts. (See below for some great examples of New Year’s Eve drinking toasts.)
Kiss someone at the stroke of midnight – Many New Year’s Eve celebrations build up to a tradition that takes place at the stroke of midnight: people kiss each other to greet the new year and say goodbye to the old year. As the old saying goes, “Kiss the person you hope to keep kissing.”
Wish someone “Happy New Year!” – At the stroke of midnight, greet others and celebrate the new year with words of good cheer.
Take in the fireworks – Fireworks can be seen worldwide on New Year’s Eve. One of the largest fireworks displays is at “America’s Party” on the Las Vegas Strip.
Traditions to bring in the New Year
Listen to live music – Many parties and events feature live music on New Year’s Eve. Musician Pitbull holds his annual New Year’s Eve concert at Miami’s Bayfront Park.
Watch the ball drop – Since 1908, in New York City’s Times Square, a large crystal ball is lowered down a pole on the One Times Square building at midnight. Around the U.S., other items are also lowered in honor of New Year’s Eve, like at Atlanta’s famous Peach Drop celebration.
Watch New Year’s Eve TV shows – For years, Americans watched New Year’s Eve programs like New Year’s Rockin’ Eve with Dick Clark (later hosted by Regis Philbin and Ryan Seacrest). Many networks offer similar broadcast celebrations of the new year if you can’t make it out on the town to attend a party in person.
Go to a theme park – Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando, Florida, and Disneyland in Anaheim, California offers celebrations to their fans to usher in the new year.
Attend Watchnight services – Many Christians attend “Watchnight” services that extend past midnight into the new year. Services involve expressing thanks for the previous year’s blessings and praying for what’s to come in the new year.
Auld Lang Syne – The traditional New Year’s Eve song is played throughout the evening. Learn more about the Auld Lang Syne song.
Fun facts
1.) Christmas Island (Kiritimati) and Tonga are some of the first locations in the world to celebrate the arrival of the new year.
2.) Baker Island, part of American Samoa southwest of Honolulu, is one of the last places to welcome in the new year.
3.) Inspired by the historical practice of lowering time balls to signal and coordinate times with ships at sea, the grand tradition of the ball drop at Times Square in New York City is memorable.
4.) Waterford Crystal panels and LED lights make up the Times Square crystal ball. According to the organizers of the ball drop celebration, the value of the ball is over $1 million.
5.) The ball weighs almost 12,000 pounds and measures 12 feet in diameter.
New Year’s Eve quotes
Hope smiles from the threshold of the year to come, whispering, ‘It will be happier.’
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
We will open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called Opportunity, and its first chapter is New Year’s Day.
Edith Lovejoy Pierce
You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.
C.S. Lewis
Cheers to a new year and another chance for us to get it right.
Oprah Winfrey
New year—a new chapter, a new verse, or just the same old story? Ultimately we write it. The choice is ours.
Alex Morritt
For last year’s words belong to last year’s language.
And next year’s words await another voice.
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
T.S. Eliot
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Quotations
What the new year brings to you will depend a great deal on what you bring to the new year.
Vern McLellan
I think it would be much more sensible if resolutions began generally on January 2.
Helen Fielding, Bridget Jones’s Diary
Year’s end is neither an end nor a beginning but a going on, with all the wisdom that experience can instill in us.
Hal Borland
We spend January 1 walking through our lives, room by room, drawing up a list of work to be done, and cracks to be patched. Maybe this year, to balance the list, we ought to walk through the rooms of our lives… not looking for flaws but for potential.
Ellen Goodman
I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.
Thomas Jefferson
My New Year’s resolution list usually starts with the desire to lose between 10 and 3,000 pounds.
Nia Vardalos
The magic in new beginnings is truly the most powerful of them all.
Josiah Martin
Sayings about New Year’s Eve
It wouldn’t be New Year’s if I didn’t have regrets.
William Thomas
Youth is when you’re allowed to stay up late on New Year’s Eve. Middle age is when you’re forced to.
Bill Vaughan
Every time you tear a leaf off a calendar, you present a new place for new ideas and progress.
Charles Kettering
The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul…
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Many years ago, I resolved never to bother with New Year’s resolutions, and I have stuck with it ever since.
Dave Beard
Good resolutions are simply checks that men draw on a bank where they have no account.
Oscar Wilde
The new year stands before us, like a chapter in a book waiting to be written. We can help write that story by setting goals.
Melody Beattie
Sentiments
I’ve had some lovely extraordinary experiences on New Year’s Eve.
Debbie Harry
A new year brings not only happiness; it makes us happy with a hope to fulfill our dreams or a new beginning of our life. So, a new year is very special to everyone.
Santonu Kumar Dhar
An optimist stays up until midnight to see the new year in. A pessimist stays up to make sure the old year leaves.
William E. Vaughan
To have the kind of year you want to have, something has to happen that you can not explain why it happened. Something has to happen that you can not coach.
Bobby Bowden
New Year’s Day. A fresh start. A new chapter in life waiting to be written. New questions to be asked, embraced, and loved. Answers to be discovered and then lived in this transformative year of delight and self-discovery. Today carve out a quiet interlude for yourself in which to dream, pen in hand. Only dreams give birth to change.
Sarah Ban Breathnach
New Year’s Quotes
Enter this new year with a gratitude for this new chance to create your dreams.
Avina Celeste
Each year’s regrets are envelopes in which messages of hope are found for the new year.
John R. Dallas Jr.
Make New Year’s goals. Dig within, and discover what you would like to have happen in your life this year. This helps you do your part. It is an affirmation that you’re interested in fully living life in the year to come.
Melody Beattie
Short New Year’s Eve Quotes
There are better things ahead than any we leave behind.
C.S. Lewis
Take a leap of faith and begin this wondrous New Year by believing.”
Sarah Ban Breathnach
The bad news is time flies. The good news is you’re the pilot.
Michael Altshuler
New Year’s Day is every man’s birthday.;
Charles Lamb
Each age has deemed the newborn year The fittest time for festal cheer.
Sir Walter Scott
The beginning is the most important part of the work.
Plato
New Year – New Beginnings
New beginnings are in order, and you are bound to feel some level of excitement as new chances come your way.
Auliq Ice
Your success and happiness lies in you. Resolve to keep happy and your joy, and you shall form an invincible host against difficulties.
Hellen Keller
Although no one can go back and make a brand new start, anyone can start from now and make a brand new ending.
Carl Bard
We spend January 1st walking through our lives, room by room, drawing up a list of work to be done, and cracks to be patched. Maybe this year, to balance the list, we ought to walk through the rooms of our lives … not looking for flaws but for potential.
Ellen Goodman
Toasts
To the old, long life and treasure; to the young, all health and pleasure.
Ben Jonson
Be always at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let each new year find you a better man.
Benjamin Franklin
May all your troubles last as long as your New Year’s resolutions.
Joey Adams
And now we welcome the new year — full of things that have never been.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going; let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.
Alfred Lord Tennyson
Check out more Toasts for New Year’s, Christmas, Wedding, Health
Resolutions
Let our New Year’s resolution be this: We will be there for one another as fellow members of humanity in the finest sense of the word.
Göran Persson
New Year’s Resolution: To tolerate fools more gladly, provided this does not encourage them to take up more of my time.
James Agate
Resolution One: I will live for God. Resolution Two: If no one else does, I still will.
Jonathan Edwards
New Year’s Day: Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual.
Mark Twain
Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Tomorrow is the first blank page of a 365-page book. Write a good one.
Brad Paisley
Neil Gaiman thoughts
I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes. Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world.
You’re doing things you’ve never done before, and more importantly, you’re doing something.
Neil Gaiman
New Year’s Eve Captions for Instagram
- Ringing in the New Year in style!
- Less bitter; more glitter!
- New Year, New Me!
- Sparkling in the New Year!
- To peace and purpose.
- Let’s your colors burst this year!
- Our lives, our time, our year!
- New Year’s Resolution: Goes in one year and out the other!
- 10 p.m. is the new midnight.
- Make me Happy!
- Out with the old and in with the new.
- Stir the eggnog, and drink the toddy. Happy New Year, everybody!
- My new year’s resolution is to stop making resolutions.
- A new chapter, a new life, and a new year!
- Page one of 365 is tomorrow.
- Embrace the change!
- It’s a do-over starting at 12:01 a.m.!
- Time to start something new.
- That’s so 2020.
- Cheers, my Dears!
- Auld Lang Syne, My Darling.
- Sip, Sip, Hooray!
- Another opportunity for us to get it right.
- May your new year sparkle and shine!
- To old friends and new starts!
- Brace yourself.
- Fearless and Confident into the new year.
- I can hardly wait.
By Liz Olson
Nancy writes about current events, entertainment, and food.
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