New Year

Every New Year’s Eve, as midnight approaches, a famous Swede steps onto a stage at Skansen — Stockholm’s open-air museum — and recites a poem by an English lord who

In Denmark, the way to tell someone you love them on New Year’s Eve is to throw a plate at their door. Not metaphorically — literally. Danes spend the year

Most countries get one New Year’s Eve. Switzerland gets two — and one of them involves a dollop of whipped cream on the floor. On December 31, the Swiss celebrate

Austria rings in the new year the way only Austria can: with a waltz. While the rest of the world counts down with pop anthems and fireworks, tens of millions

Ask a German what they are doing on December 31 and the answer is short: Silvester. Not “New Year’s Eve,” not “the 31st” — Silvester, named after a fourth-century pope,

The Netherlands does not ease into the new year. It detonates into it — with milk churns full of carbide thundering across the fields of Drenthe, with deep-fried dough balls

When the clock strikes midnight in Portugal, two things happen at once: twelve raisins disappear — one per chime, one wish per raisin — and all across the country, people

At the stroke of midnight in a Greek home, the head of the household takes a knife, traces the sign of the cross three times over a round cake, and

On New Year’s Eve in Italy, the most important shopping you will do has nothing to do with dinner. From mid-December, lingerie shop windows in Rome, Naples, and Milan turn

In France, New Year’s Eve is not a party. It is a production — a long, luxurious, meticulously orchestrated dinner called le réveillon de la Saint-Sylvestre that begins before nightfall

Indonesia does New Year’s Eve at two speeds. In Bali, the year ends barefoot: tens of thousands of revelers packed into beach clubs along the Canggu and Seminyak shoreline, DJs

Every December 31, Singapore turns its most famous postcard into its biggest party. The Marina Bay Singapore Countdown — the city-state’s official New Year’s Eve celebration — draws hundreds of