Three, Two, One… Happy New Year!  Dating all the way back to 2000 BC, New Year’s has been celebrated for many generations. Many Jamesville-DeWitt students and faculty have special family traditions they observe every year.  These range from parties, to special foods, all the way to unique ways to celebrate the New York City Ball Drop.

Sophomore Nora Prosak stays lowkey when it comes to New Year’s Eve.  “My family and I go to church…we go out to dinner, and then when we get home, my sisters go out with their friends and I sleep over at my friend’s house,” says Prosak. She likes to stay up all night with her friends to get the full experience of the night.

Freshman Nick Trivelpiece is the opposite. He likes to invite his friends over and celebrate the New Year with them. “We invite people we know and care about over to our house to have a big party,” Trivelpiece said.

New Year’s isn’t only about celebrating the New Year, it’s about culture and religion as well.  “We all get together as a family and we make a . . . Greek spinach pie and we hide a coin in it and whoever gets the coin in their piece has good luck for that year,” says senior Chryssa Tzetzis.  

The J-DHS faculty also has traditions for the New Year.  “My New Year’s tradition in my family is the [Robert] Burns dinner, where it’s the most famous poet from Scotland, so we have a dinner in his honor.  Traditionally there’s a soup, haggis… and a lot of singing and telling of poems”, said J-DHS earth science teacher Charles May.

English teacher Joseph Dechick also has traditions for the New Year.  “We tend to have kind of a big meal on New Year’s Day as a family, and we like to have a bean dish as a part of that meal because beans are supposed to bring good luck,” Dechick said.

The New Year comes in all shapes and sizes.  As Ferris Bueller once said in the 1986 John Hughes film, “Life moves pretty fast.  If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you might miss it.”