New Year's Eve

In the Gregorian calendar, Near Year's Eve (also known as Old Year's Day or Saint Sylvester’s Day in many countries), the last day of the year, is on December 31. In many countries, New Year's Eve is celebrated at evening social gatherings, where many people dance, eat, drink alcoholic beverages, and watch or light fireworks to mark the new year. Some people attend a watchnight service.  The celebrations generally go on past midnight into January 1 (New Year’s Day).

Kiribati is the first country to welcome the New Year while Honolulu, Hawaii, in the United States of America is among the last.

New Year’s Eve in the United States

In the United States, New Year's Eve is celebrated with formal parties, family-oriented activities, and other large public events.

One of the most prominent celebrations in the country is the "ball drop" held in New York City’s Times Square.  Inspired by the time balls that were formally used as a time signal, at 11:59 p.m. ET, an 11,875-pound (5,386 kg), 12-foot (3.7 m) diameter Waterford crystal ball located on the roof of One Times Square is lowered down a pole that is 70 feet high, reaching the roof of the building one minute later to signal the start of the New Year. The Ball Drop has been held since 1907, and in recent years has averaged around a million spectators annually. The popularity of the spectacle also inspired similar “drop” events outside of New York City, which often use objects that represent a region's culture, geography, or history—such as Atlanta’s "Peach Drop", representing Georgia’s identity as the "Peach State," or Nashville's "Music Note Drop".

The portrayal of festivities on radio and television has helped ingrain certain aspects of the celebration in American pop culture; beginning on the radio in 1928, and on CBS television from 1956 to 1976 (which also included coverage of the ball drop), Guy Lombardo and his band, The Royal Canadians, presented an annual New Year's Eve broadcast from the ballroom of New York's Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. The broadcasts were also well known for the Royal Canadians' signature performance of "Auld Lang Syne" at midnight, which helped popularize the song as a New Year's standard.  After Lombardo's death in 1977, prominence shifted towards ABC’s special Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve (which had recently moved from NBC), originally intended by its creator and host Dick Clark to be a modern and youthful alternative to Lombardo's big band music. Including ABC’s special coverage of the year 2000, Clark would host New Year's Eve coverage on ABC for 33 straight years. After suffering a stroke, Clark ceded hosting duties in 2005 to talk show host Regis Philbin. Although Clark returned the following year, a speech impediment caused by the stroke prevented him from being the main host until his death in April 2012, Clark made limited appearances on the show as a co-host, but was formally succeeded by Ryan Seacrest.

New Year's Eve is traditionally the busiest day of the year at Walt Diusney World Resort in Florida and Disneyland in Anaheim, California, where the parks stay open late and the usual nightly fireworks are supplemented by an additional New Year's Eve-specific show at midnight.

Los Angeles, a city long without a major public New Year celebration, held for the first time on December 31, 2013 a major gathering in Downtown’s newly completed Grand Park. The event included food trucks, art installations, and various color and light shows, culminating with a massive light projection onto the side of Los Angeles City Hall which counted down to midnight with the crowd. The event drew over 25,000 spectators and participants, and is expected to rival other major cities' festivities in years to come.

Religious observances

In the Roman Catholic Church, January 1 is a solemnity honoring the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of Jesus; it is a Holy Day of Obligation in most countries (Australia being a notable exception), thus the Church requires the attendance of all Catholics in such countries for Mass that day. However a vigil Mass may be held on the evening before a Holy Day; thus it has become customary to celebrate Mass on the evening of New Year's Eve. (New Year's Eve is a feast day honoring Pope Sylvester I in the Roman Catholic calendar, but it is not widely recognized in the United States.)

Many Christian congregations have New Year's Eve watchnight services. Some, especially Lutherans and Methodists and those in the African American community, have a tradition known as "Watch Night", in which the faithful congregate in services continuing past midnight, giving thanks for the blessings of the outgoing year and praying for divine favor during the upcoming year. In the English-speaking world, Watch Night can be traced back to John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, who learned the custom from the Moravian Brethren who came to England in the 1730s. Moravian congregations still observe the Watch Night service on New Year's Eve. Watch Night took on special significance to African Americans on New Year's Eve 1862, as slaves anticipated the arrival of January 1, 1863, when Lincoln had announced he would sign the Emancipation Proclamation

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Year%27s_Eve