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| | Both Presidents Bush started the New Year by hunting quail. The two Bushes beat the bushes in search of quail together with James Baker in Southern Texas. President G.W. Bush spent New Year's Eve with his family and with his friends at the Crawford, Texas, ranch he calls home.
New Year events quite exotically take place in Australia. The absence of ice, Christmas trees, deer and other habitual attributes of the festival does not grieve the people of the continent. Santa Claus celebrates the start of New Year by his arrival at the specially decorated beaches of Sydney by observing the traditions of the Old World. Compulsorily he will have white beard and red color cap with tail at the end. A swimming suit covers the sun burned body of the gift distributor. Huge crowds of people visit different public places in open areas, where mass fire works (salute) take place. One of the most beautiful places is Victoria Park, which is located in center of the capital, where Australians celebrate the New Year events with international jokes and appetite smells of European-Asian-American dishes. The specialty of an Australian New Year event is its practical absence after midnight. Australians get up at 5-6 AM in spite of holidays or festivals and go to bed no later than 10 PM. That’s why New Year night itself is absent. At 00.10 everybody is in bed.
Different pyrotechnic based items are used while celebrating the New Year: Christmas crackers, sparklers, and other multi launch fire works, rockets, Roman lights, huge and small detonating cartridges and etc.
The usage of a huge quantity of pyrotechnic based items, including by minors, creates potentially fire hazardous situations, that’s why New Year is considered as a highly tense period of the Year for fire fighting and rescue groups. However, because of the attention of mass media on the fire hazard problem with pyrotechnic based items, this problem is demonstrated in a magnified view, and also the suppression of (mainly in unintended cases) statistics of other reasons for fire (particularly smoking and improper handling with electrical equipment). Data on such statistics are stably high during the entire year and significantly higher than the data on fire due to the improper usage of pyrotechnics.
The time of New Year festivals – this is the time of beauty and the time of the good fairy, which comes to each home at the end of each year along with winter chills. It brings us hope for better lives, gives many gifts and insists on hoping better. During this time, we start to feel heroes of the fairy.
The kid in each of us wakes up, we start to perceive things happening in our surroundings with the eyes of kids, though we are not kids.
Now, this is one of our lovely festivals. Do you know that earlier, instead of Christmas trees, other trees were decorated? They were cherries, which were specially grown in tubs.
The tradition of decorating the Christmas tree started 2000 years ago. Earlier people were thinking, that all the trees were made up of good forces and kind souls lived there. By hanging the refreshments and gifts people tried to impress these souls. But evergreen Christmas trees had their own specialty among other trees.
It was the holy center, "peace tree", which symbolized life itself and new rebirth from shadows and darkness.
Earlier, instead of dolls, fruits from different trees were used for decorating the trees, for example:
* Apples – symbol of fertility
* Nuts – inconceivability of godlike fields
* Eggs – symbol of developing life, harmony and complete prosperity.
Old New Year — New Year as per Julian’s calendar (“Old style”). In the 20th and 21st centuries comes a night between the 13th and 14th of January as per the Gregorian calendar (“New style”). After switching over to the new style, the Old New Year also is being celebrated as per traditions unofficially in some countries.
In Russia, there is a tradition to celebrate the Old New Year not only for preserving the tradition but also as the Russian Orthodox Church continues celebrating all the religious festivals as per the Julian’s calendar (“Old style”). In this case the modern New Year falls post Christmas – Orthodox 40 days post in honor of Christmas.
The tradition to celebrate the Old New year started after 1918, when new counting had been introduced in Russia.
After the disintegration of the USSR, except in Russia, the Old New Year is celebrated also in Byelorussia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan (approximately 40% of population), and also by Slovenians and people of ex-Soviet Republics in other near and far countries. However in the last few years, there is a decrease of people celebrating the Old New Year.
Ex Yugoslavia:
The tradition to celebrate the Old New Year is still alive in Serbia and Chernogoria, as the Serbian Orthodox Church continues to live as per the Julian’s calendar. Serbian people call this festival as the Serbian New Year. The Old New Year is also celebrated in Macedonia.
Switzerland:
The Old New Year as per the Julian calendar (the old day of Saint Silvester, in German Alter Silvester) is celebrated also in some German speaking areas of Switzerland. As in Russia, these are the traces of non-acceptance of the transition to the Gregorian calendar.
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