I've never fully understood the fascination with watching the ball drop in New York on New Year's Eve. It's a ball. It drops. People count. The night is over. And who actually enjoys singing Auld Lang Syne, anyway?The Washington Post shares my sentiments, and wrote up a great article today about alternative New Year's trends. They note the U.S. towns that have taken New Year's Eve into their own hands. In historic harbor town Annapolis, Maryland, folks will drop a sailboat--yes, a sailboat--decked out with lights. Georgians are dropping peaches and chicken nuggets (we get the peach thing, but nuggets? Really?). Floridians get even more into it, and will lower (not drop) Sushi--a local drag queen--from a balcony in Key West.
Copenhagen, New Orleans, Sydney, and other cities around the world also boast elaborate fireworks displays, and while Sydney may be the first large city to set off a major display, the small island of Kiritimati (or, Christmas Island) is actually the first to ring in the New Year.Douglas Raybeck, an anthropology professor at Hamilton College, has studied exotic rituals in dozens of countries, but none have taken to dropping things with such zeal.
It all comes down to a human need to mark moments of change, he believes, and the dropping of balls, sausages and other preferred objects constitutes the perfect symbol. "It's a shared experience. Everyone can see the inception and the terminus of the ball drop," he said.
It wouldn't work as well to launch an object, he theorizes, because it continues into the air for unknown periods of time. Dropping is linear and has a definite end. It quantifies visually the exact moment we enter another year, with all its promises of possibilities and new hope.
"We call it a liminal period, a threshold and point of transition," he said.
And what do all those towns with all those giant pickles and 70-pound tangerines have to say about that?
"Honestly, we just started it because we were tired of watching New York's ball drop every year," said Marie U'Ren, 68, as she prepared Easton's huge crab for its annual plummet. For years, parties in Easton had ended with everyone gathering somewhat anticlimactically around a TV screen in the town's main arts hall. "This year, I mean, it's a big, huge crab on a hydraulic lift. No one's going to want to miss something like that."
So, no matter what you're dropping tonight, Happy New Year! From all of your friends at Intelligent Travel.
Photo: Tom Bennett, via the Intelligent Travel Flickr pool
Subscribe to RSS feed
Subscribe to RSS feed
Here's another alternative ball drop I just came across on Thicket magazine: the world's largest MoonPie rose over Mobile on New Year's Eve:
http://thicketmag.com/content/?p=356
I was there this year for the drag queen drop in Key West this year. Sushi is my favorite! She gets lowered in a giant red high-heeled shoe, by the way.
Fantastic photo!! New is a celebration with passion and cultural rites of every human being in this planet, like experience of my aunt in 2003 they celebrate new year in Hostel Barcelona and they see how the Spaniard celebrate their new year.