Where To Celebrate New Year’s Eve 2022 In Long Valley

LONG VALLEY, NJ — The new year is almost here and if you're spending New Year's Eve in Long Valley this year, there are plenty of activities happening in and around the city.

To help celebrate the new year, nearby restaurants are offering entertaining special dinner menus, such as Morristown's Horseshoe Tavern. If dancing is on the agenda for the evening, the neighborhood Mexican restaurant Orale Mexican Kitchen is hosting a fun 80s dance party.

The 6th annual St. Mark's New Year's Day 5K is scheduled for January 1st. Registration for the run is still open, and the fee is $30. An indoor awards ceremony with bagels and hot chocolate will be held, as well as a prize drawing.

Here is a look at some additional events happening in and around Long Valley. Patch has you covered no matter what your mood is tonight.

• First Night Morris County: First Night Morris County 2023 provides a magnificent family-friendly, substance-free and alcohol-free celebration in the heart of Morristown. Fireworks will begin at 9:15 p.m., and the program concludes with the new Midnight Countdown Featuring Fireworks to Welcome in the New Year.
• 80s Prom New Year's Eve: Celebrate the New Year by going back in time at Orale Mexican Kitchen. The event features a prix fixe menu, open bar and DJ.
• A Tequila New Year's Eve: The event at Nom Mexican Table + Tequila Bar includes an open bar from 10 p.m. until 1:30 a.m., a DJ, a taco buffet and a midnight tequila shot.
• New Year's Eve Celebration: Countdown to 2023! Enjoy three hours of unlimited bowling at Stryxe and amusements, specialty pizza, sweets, unlimited soft drinks and a champagne toast for guests 21+.
• The Drop At 1776: Celebrate New Year’s Eve In Style At 1776 By David Burke Featuring Topgolf Swing Suite. Doors Open at 8 p.m. Live DJ performance Buffet with Celebrity Chef David Burke signature stations.
• St. Mark's New Year's Day 5K: Bagels and hot chocolate will be provided at an indoor awards ceremony with a drawing for prizes.
• New Year's Eve 2023: Ring in the New Year with a 5-hour open bar, dinner buffet, champagne toast at midnight, and the best DJs around at Morristown's Horseshoe Tavern.

In the United States, one of the most popular New Year’s Eve traditions is, of course, the dropping of the giant ball in New York City’s Times Square. Various cities have adopted their own iterations of the event — the Peach Drop in Atlanta, the Chick Drop in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and the giant Potato Drop in Boise, Idaho.

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.