I bet you did not know all of these 10 New Year’s facts… or maybe you did

The new year is quickly approaching. And with that comes New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. These two holidays help us go out with the old and in with the new, and there are also some New Year’s facts I am sure you might not have previously known.

1. New Year’s starts in Kiribati and ends in American Samoa – 2026 will first hit the island known as Kiribati before anywhere else. Meanwhile, the South Pacific Ocean territory known as American Samoa will be sitting in the year 2025 for most of the time Kiribati is celebrating January 1. Crazy, right?
2. New Year’s is about 4,000 years old – New Year’s Day has been celebrated since ancient Babylon times. Talk about a long-standing holiday!
3. The new year used to start in March – The former 11-day festival was celebrated in March before the Gregorian calendar came about. Now that January marks one full trip around the sun, it also marks a new year.
4. Americans keep their resolutions for around 36 days – I honestly thought the number would be much lower than this. Then again, there are some people who wind up keeping their resolutions all year long, so I guess that evens it out, right?
5. Pork and sauerkraut is a big thing in Pennsylvania – I never knew this until I went to school in Virginia, but pork and sauerkraut is not a well-known New Year’s tradition in many places.
6. Over 360 million glasses of sparkling wine are drunk on New Year’s Eve– I mean, is that really surprising? New Year’s Eve is the most heavily drunk on night, so let people drink whatever they want. Even if it is sparkling wine.
7. New Year’s Eve is more popular than New Year’s Day– This is the only holiday where the “eve” is more celebrated than the actual day. It’s also like the fourth most popular holiday of the year.
8. The Times Square New Year’s Eve party celebrated the launch of the New York Times– That’s right. The big ol’ party in Times Square was originally started because they wanted a way to celebrate the newspaper giant we all know today. They just did not realize it would become a massive event in the future with more than a million people attending.
9. The New Year’s ball has 32,256 LEDs– That’s a lot of lights! That’s probably more lights than are lit up in an entire neighborhood during Christmas. Well… that might be stretching it a little bit.
10. 2,000 pounds of confetti are dropped in Times Square– Imagine if this all got dropped on you at one time… For real though. That’s a whole lot of confetti to clean up on New Year’s Day!

And if you are wondering why the apostrophe in New Year’s, it’s because the New Year is possessive. It seems odd until you actually think about it more.

And on a more serious note, New Year’s Eve is the most drunken night of the year. So before you start knocking back a couple six packs tonight, remember to leave your keys at the door.