New Year’s Eve 2023 In Rocky Hill Area: First Night Hartford

ROCKY HILL, CT — The time has come to put another year in the books and look ahead to a new one.

And in Rocky Hill, there are options both in town and nearby to celebrate the calendar switch from 2023 to 2024.

Here is a look at some additional events happening in the Rocky Hill area:

• The largest New Year's Eve celebration in the state is First Night Hartford, which takes place downtown at Hartford's Bushnell Park.

It will feature two fireworks shows: one at 6 p.m. for younger families and a traditional one at midnight.

In addition, First Night will have various, multicultural activities, events and music performances in and around Bushnell Park.

For more information on First Night Hartford, click on this link.

• The Rocky Hill area also features various celebrations of differing sorts at local clubs, restaurants, and civic groups.

For more information on a variety of Rocky Hill events, click on this link.

National traditions

In the United States, one of the most popular New Year’s Eve traditions is the dropping of the giant ball in New York City’s Times Square. Other U.S. cities have adopted iterations of the ball drop — the Chick Drop in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and the giant Potato Drop in Boise, Idaho, for example.

The end of one year and beginning of another is often celebrated with 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 history of New Year’s resolutions dates back 8,000 years to ancient Babylonians, who would make promises to return borrowed objects and pay outstanding debts at the beginning of the new year, in mid-March when they planted their crops.

According to legend, if they kept their word, pagan gods would grant them favor in the coming year. If they broke the promise, they would fall out of God’s favor, according to a history of New Year’s resolutions compiled by North Hampton Community College New Center in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

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 myriad 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 and a plan to meet the stress and discomfort of changing a habit or condition.