New Years Eve isn’t about dressing up. It’s about dressing down.

Picture today are from the train from London to Bodmin Pkwy Station UK

We’ll look at more weird New Years stuff since that seems to be entertaining me this week and of course we’ll have Jamie to finish with.

VINTAGE Cast-Iron DOG With Rat Figurines

$90.90

https://www.etsy.com/listing/258924369/vintage-cast-iron-dog-with-rat-figurines?ref=shop_home_active_1

That depressing moment when you realize that no one is going to text/inbox/tell you that they wish you were with them on new years eve.

So what was your best NYE—your weirdest—- I look back on so many of them and yet nothing seriously comes to mind. We use to go to a local and wonderful Chinese Restaurant (Imperial Dynasty—www.imperialdynasty.com) with friends and we all shared a big table and drank and ate and then eventually went back to our place where everybody drank and snacked and ushered (more like cheered) in the New Years….not exciting but fun and without me spending days cooking and preparing….Hurray.

Based on some previous knowledge of ancient people it’s pretty safe to assume that the horns, fire crackers and the like probably date way back in our history and help to make the New year right by scaring away evil in the form of spirits, demons or things that go bump in the night.

Brazil has traditions of wearing white as a symbol of tranquility and rebirth of the new year…but some in Brazil go to the sea at Midnight where they honor the sea goddess (goes back to African origins) Lamanja. Here they jump over seven waves and throw rice, jewelry and other offering into the sea to please her…..you just gotta hope there’s not major wave causer going on at the moment….course drowning might mean the ultimate offering.

Here’s wishing you more happiness. Than all my words can tell, not just alone for New Years Eve but for all the year as well.

Here are some traditions you might (or not) like to add to your traditions:

Got your eye on a hot neighbor in your neighborhood or apartment complete….convince everybody to participate in a Venice (Italy) tradition and have a collective kissing session at the bewitching and transition entry to the New Year, and maybe an intro to the hottie and if not then at least a quick feel?!

little more adventuresome—a water fight is traditional in Thailand, but I suggest that you do it with people you like as they traditionally last 3 days—can you visualize the water bills??????

Other possibilities (though I don’t encourage it) is throwing furniture out the windows (South Africa) and using the holiday to deal with a problem in the neighborhood with a NYE boxing match or two (Peru).

We will open the book. Its pages are blank. We will put words on them ourselves. The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Years Day.

While those in Chili spend the beginning of the New Year with dead loved ones in the cemetery, the Irish prefer to practice safety precautions by striking the walls with bread to ward off evil spirits. I wander if you could do that to the walls of the cemetery while partying with the dear departed—that way your evil mother-in-law can’t come to join your party.

And in Russia there is different days to celebrate. While many celebrate on the traditional day (for a large part of the world) of Dec 31st. But some celebrate in the more traditional Russian day of the year’s starting January 14th and it is on this day that Ded Moroz, a Santa Clause type character delivers his bag of goodies—-now you know how he gets all the house delivered to he has Russia on a different time date for all those goodies and presents.

CNN has a list of weird things that we in the US drop at the passing of one and the beginning of the next. They include:

from a Watermelon (Indiana)

a 10 lb. block of Bologna (Penn)

and a pickle to go with in (N.C)

and my favorite a possum (Ga)–but before you animal lovers get enraged it’s stuff and in a ball and covered in holiday lights/HELP…..

Michigan drops a cherry and one town in Florida a pineapple.

Think about what’d you’d drop if given a chance—Black Jack Randall….my ex-husband……the list could go on and on.

OH and in Key West the straights (Sloopy Joes) drop a conch shell and the gays (801 Saloon) a ruby slipper…..I have been to the isle around Christmas, but never for New Year….gotta remember to do that one of these days.

Youth is when you’re allowed to stay up late on New Year’s Eve. Middle age is when you’re forced to.

Bill Vaughn

Did you know that we —I’m not sure this is people in general or just the ones in Japan–suffer from 108 evil desires (is that 108 separate or just a couple over and over again–like I lust after Jamie and Sam 108 different times a day or week or whatever) and in Japan they thus ring the bells to liberate us (them?) from these desires 108 time on New Year Eve. I wonder if it helps?

In Norway the national TV broadcasts a short subject–a comedy “A Dinner for One” just before the New Years count down, after which the average citizen jumps off a chair or smashes a plate against the door of a loved one…after which the loved one screams: Spor ikke glas i huset venligst (don’t track glass into the house please or something similar)….you’d

think that the Norse would be a little more flamboyant…rather like the Scots who reportedly in some areas make balls of wire and paper, light them aflame and walk about the streets swinging them…some how the plates seem a lot less weird after that.

There’s no end to the bizarre–in Romania they dance about…in BEAR SKINS (NOT BARE), though they might be bare under the bear….the facts didn’t include that….hum……….