Where Middletown Residents Can Celebrate New Year's Eve 2024

MIDDLETOWN, CT — Middletown residents wanting to celebrate New Year's Eve have several options.

Here is a sampling for the region:

First Night Is Back

• First Night Hartford returns with a family-friendly, alcohol-free New Year's Eve celebration that features fireworks, music, art, and food in the state's capital city.

Dinner

• Check out Downtown Middletown restaurants here.
• Residents can ring in the New Year with a six-course plated prix fixe dinner at Fire at the Ridge. A complementary toast will be staged at midnight with a cash bar all evening. A a DJ and dancing will be on tap from 7:30 p.m. to midnight. Dinner service will be held from 6:30 p.m. to 9 p.m. Reservations are required. $79 per person, plus taxes and gratuities.
• In Simsbury at Millwright's, one of Open Table's top restaurants for romance in 2024, two prix fixe dinner options are being offered.
• Cafe Aura, Geno Auriemma's restaurant in Manchester is serving up its regular dinner menu, along with special celebratory dishes. Every entrée comes with a complimentary glass of Prosecco.

Snow Sports

• Powder Ridge is offering skiing and riding.
• The trails will be lit up all day and into the evening for skiing and snowboarding at Mount Southington.

Comedy

• The Funny Bone in Manchester is featuring Rodney Perry.

Quiet Night At Home

• The Yule Log has been around for many years and offers continuous holiday music in a fireplace setting that never seems to die. Residents can usually find it and other continuous holiday music on YouTube.
• Excuse all the apostrophes, but Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve with Ryan Seacrest is televised annually.

The transition from one year to the next is often marked by the singing of "Auld Lang Syne," a Scottish folk song whose title roughly translates to "days gone by," according to Encyclopedia Britannica and History.com.

The tradition of New Year’s resolutions dates back 8,000 years to ancient Babylonians, who made promises to return borrowed items and repay debts at the beginning of the new year, which was in mid-March when they planted their crops.

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Related: What New Year’s Resolution Did You Keep? How Did You Do It? [Patch Survey]

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According to legend, if people kept their word, the pagan gods would grant them favor in the coming year. However, if they broke their promises, they would lose favor with the gods.

Many secular New Year’s resolutions focus on imagining new, improved versions of ourselves.

The failure rate of New Year’s resolutions is about 80 percent, according to U.S. News & World Report. There are many reasons, but a big one is they’re made out of remorse — for gaining weight, for example — and aren’t accompanied by a shift in attitude or a plan for coping with the stress and discomfort that comes with changing a habit or condition.