Celebrate New Years Around the World

When Rob was 5, Sesame Street had a great special- Sesame Street Stays Up Late. In it they had puppet guests from the different countries who showed all New Year's customs in each of their home lands. We thought it would be a cool idea to get a little something from each of the celebrations in each country and use it in our New Year's Eve celebration. Be careful! We got a huge sugar high. We had apples dipped in honey from the Jewish New Year, sparkling apple cider from the French, donuts from the German, fireworks from the Chinese, and of course noise makers and hats from the US.

Here are some resources you might see in your library:
The book Sesame Street Stays Up Late
The DVD Sesame Street Celebrates the New Year
Kids Around the World Celebrate

Here is a very inclusive web site at FathersTime.net

At the transition from 1999-2000, ABC News had a New Year's Eve celebration that started at 5AM EST on Dec 31st and lasted 5AM on New Year's Day. It was fun to go to all of these places around the world and see their celebrations- at the time that they were celebrating the New Year.

Here is a resource to do that: Table Showing When Places Around the World Will Celebrate the New Year. To read the table in your time, simply go to the line that has a city in your time zone and click the use this TZ link. Think it might be fun to link up customs to the time midnight arrives in each time zone. It would even be cooler to have links to a local news station in each time zone to see the celebrations.

Time passes. This year, my son is 21. Last night we watched Three Sheets New Years celebrations which showed the travelers bar hopping in NY and pub crawling in London- each to show how each country celebrates the New Years in alcohol. Nice to watch but I am NOT going out and buying alcohol from each country to celebrate New Years' Around the World. Luckily, we're having a much more mild celebration in mind- he wants to bake a Guinness Chocolate Cake.