Do you celebrate New Year's Eve

NYE - just too much too close to Eve, Day, Boxing... We do enjoy the fireworks, (DH birthday).

16 / 12.
Saturday.

We have our 3 grandchildren and their parents for dinner. Then we have the traditional grape ceremony at 23.55 ..

Then our twin daughters and their husbands shall head out for drinks at their hotel and we shall have the kids with us and their 2 dogs ( 1 French Bull and 1 Dalmation + our 2 Birman kit kats ).

Lunch on the 1st shall be casual and here at our attic condo flat.

We always do a Cheese Fondue with Kirsh, a filet mignon Fondue and then a chocolate fondue with sponge.

I get paid for babysitting on New Years Eve so some useful spending money

We threw a NYE party at home for years, with a sit-down dinner, followed by “pub” games, followed by Big Ben, making sure the chosen “first-footer” was outside before midnight to bring in our New Year, followed by Auld Lang Syne, followed by champagne, to bed in the early hours………
This year will be the first time we won’t be doing this. We are going out for dinner with a few friends, then back to theirs. Not sure where we’ll see in the New Year, but I know DH and I will still be up at midnight.

My mother died on NYE and,though it was in 1974 and I am ten years older now than sge was when she died (sorry- sounds like one of those maths problems), I just don't have the heart. We are usually in bed befiore midnight and I don't really drink, so there's not much of a celebration. But I do wish all Gransnetters a happy 2024. The world could certainly do with a reset.

Used to have great parties when children young, silly games, folk brought food , stayed over , good walk on New Year’s Day. Now we have a quiet meal, a couple of drinks, watch tv, then absorb the firework displays from our lounge window. Suits us!

I’ve never in my life “seen in” a New Year. I go to bed at my usual time and wake in a world which is exactly the same as before.

never up for it/ to bed about 11 and the firework wake me up
so i dont like ny

We used to celebrate with friends then we started going away for the NY, both in the UK and abroad, Germany, Iceland and Poland , enjoyed them all but the last 6 years have been at home due to DH health , we have a nice meal with a bottle of wine and are tucked up in bed by 11.00pm . I like to go for a nice walk on the 1st and we watch the new years dip at our beach weather permitting and a lovely coffee/Hot chocolate at our favourite beach cafe.

We rarely actively celebrate NYE, have in the past with friends, latterly we have a nice meal at home and enjoy the tv celebrations or a film. This past year has been a hard one for us and our loved ones for many and varied reasons. Almost don’t dare celebrate the ending of the year in case the next brings more worry and illness. We’re all out of energy and resilience here. It will be an early night for us.

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light:
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

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.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind
For those that here we see no more;
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
The faithless coldness of the times;
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes
But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease;
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.
Alfred Lord Tennyson, An excerpt taken from In Memorium.

We don't do anything special now, just maybe a drink at midnight. In the past DH used to go to the village pub and I would stay at home with the last of the Baileys and a big bag of Twiglets. I cou.d stand the forced jollity and people kissing me who would ignore me for the rest of the year. I do like NYD though, no housework and a special meal.

Couldn't stand ... (oops)

Elegran, beautiful sentiments, thank you to you for echoing Tennyson's poignant words.
We used to love giving parties, but now we have a fillet steak, watch Jules Holland (which doesn't have quite the same ring after finding out it was pre recorded), share a bottle of fizz and then bed.

Silverlining , this was common in Scotland years ago. It was ‘okay’ to turn up uninvited at relatives, friends and neighbour’s homes to ‘ firstfoot ‘. One drink would be consumed, then you moved on. You might have neighbours come on Hogmanay, then you would have little more than a passing word with them during the rest of the year.

But if your neighbour 's house showed no lights at 2.30 am and they had obviously gone to bed - or perhaps they too were out first-footing, leaving the house empty - you would usually move on to someone else. It sounds as though those first-footers had reached the stage of conviviality where the drinkers want everyone to be as deliriously happy as they are.

Of course Il be celebrating, my dh cousins from Edinburgh have visited us every year for the past 40 yrs and this year will be no exception
I’ll be laying on nibbles and drinks and we’ll be watching tv until well into the night, it’s a National tradition for us to have a butchers steak pie next day along with a hearty breakfast of butchers sausages, black pudding, fried eggs Stuart’s rolls toast, jam and fresh orange juice with bits in it, It’s going to be bittersweet though it’ll be the first one without my dh. We’ll even see the celebrations light up the sky across the Firth of Forth from my living room window

Elegran thank you for the Tennyson, one of my favourite poets, also my late DH. He used to quote “The splendour falls on castle walls”.

Thank you for all your replies. It seems that I am not the only one that wants to have a quiet New Year's Eve this year. It will be lovely to stay at home in the warm and have a low key celebration. Will probably be in bed before the clock strikes 12 snuggled under my duvet. Bliss!

Used to have great parties when children young, silly games, folk brought food

Immediately reminded me of the wonderful new year celebrations we used to have when DC were of scondary school age. We had friends whose children matched ours and the four of them got on like a house on fire.

We lived in a large multi storey Victorian sme, where the children occupied the top floor. The children would disappear upstairs doing God alone knows what, with tin trays, bannisters and other potentially dangerous activities while we four adults sat in the living room with some wine, unable to hear anything happening upstairs and talking and laughing. As midnight approached I would bring in a a buffet supper and all of us would gather to see in the New Year together.

I am reminded of this because my last year my dear friend died suddenly and her husband's mild dementia spiralled down and he is now in care. The four children are scattered to the four winds, but like last year as we and daughter wait for the New Year we will remember our friends and those happy new years.

I still enjoy it. Our Christmas is very family-focused and NYE is with friends. The quality of the fizz has improved over the years and the food has got less faffy!

silverlining your Scottish neighbours were First Footing you! If it was 2.30am you must have been the last call before home.
Just the mention of that brings back so many memories for me, from sledging down a steep street in tea trays at about 2am to, many years later, parading round our OMQ (Officers' Married Quarters) with an impromptu band. This comprised of one piper, many pots and pans and biscuit tins and wooden spoons and a Mop Major proudly leading us. We called in on every house where people were not quick enough to switch all the lights off when they heard us coming!
I'm into my 80s now and don't do anything these days except go out the back door just before the bells, stand and listen to the ships' sirens sounding in the little port down below, and then walk round to the front door to let the New Year in. As I live on the top of a hill I can watch the fireworks going off around the countryside. I still find it magical, even if I'm alone with my memories now.

At the beginning of WW2 my mother's employer moved their main office from London to Edinburgh, and my mother went with them.

Her first New Year there was a a real party as with so many men away in the forces, there was a lack of tall black haired men to lead the first footing. Now my mother had a distinctive mop of unruly, curly black hair so they replaced the tall blackhaired man with a short, but clearly blackhaired woman and she found herself at the front of the festivities.

As redhead, I have never been allowed to First Foot, for it would bring bad luck. I have always been the last person to enter the house, we were visiting!