Drop Everything: 11 Quirky New Year’s Eve Celebrations To Start 2025

Americans will drop almost everything to celebrate New Year’s Eve.

They literally will.

And the glittering ball that has dropped on Times Square every Dec. 31 is tame and even mundane when compared to other things that are dropped as the new year rises — muskrats and opossums, cheese and pickles, and the biggest Peeps Chick anyone has ever seen.

Below are 11 quirky New Year’s Eve traditions that don’t seem quite so strange when you understand the backstory:

Midnight Muskrat Dive, Princess Anne, Maryland

Wearing a cape and stovepipe hat, Marshall Muskrat glides down a zip line every New Year’s Eve during the Midnight Muskrat Dive in Princess Anne, Maryland.

Don’t worry, Marshall isn’t a live muskrat, but one preserved by a taxidermist and presented to the town by the Maryland Department of Natural Resources in a nod to muskrats that have long roamed the marshy Delmarva Peninsula.

Varmints are used more often than a person might think in New Year’s Eve celebrations.

Possum Drop, Tallapoosa, Georgia

In Tallapoosa, a western Georgia town known among early settlers as “Possum Snout” (after a local Native American tribal chief), a stuffed opossum is placed inside a lighted ball and lowered from one of the town’s oldest buildings in the annual New Year’s Eve Possum Drop.

The celebration started in the late 1990s when town leaders decided to create an event playing off its original name. Career taxidermist Bud Jones had just mounted a dead opossum he had found on the road and offered it up for the drop. It is named Spencer, after businessman Ralph L. Spencer, who is widely credited with creating the 19th-century boom town after the discovery of gold.

Walleye Drop, Port Clinton, Ohio

Context is required in understanding the draw of other traditions as well, including the Walleye Drop in Port Clinton, Ohio. It doesn’t rain fish, but a giant 600-pound, 20-foot lighted fiberglass fish named “Wylie Walleye Jr.” is lowered in homage to the so-called “walleye capital of the world.”

The original Wylie Walleye in 1997 was made of paper mache. The celebration on the shores of a small Lake Erie town, which includes a spectacular fireworks show and bar “swim,” has become so popular that it has been simulcast on a split screen with New York City’s Ball Drop.

Peeps Chick Drop, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania

2025 will get off to a sweet, gooey start in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, the birthplace of Just Born Quality Confections’ Easter-centric Peeps Chicks. The two-day PeepFest draws crowds from around the country to see a ginormous 400-pound Peeps Chick lowered at dusk on both Dec. 30 and Dec. 31.

• Take the related Patch survey: What New Year’s Resolution Did You Keep? How Did You Do It?

The festival has both indoor and outdoor activities. This year, a new marshmallow flavor will be introduced ahead of the Easter season release.

Mushroom Drop, Kennett Square, Pennsylvania

Kennett Square produces more than half of the nation’s mushrooms. Fittingly, a 700-pound electric mushroom descends at midnight as the crowd below sings Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline.”

Why “Sweet Caroline”? There’s no particular reason, other than it’s melodic and has easy-to-remember lyrics. The song has nothing to do with mushrooms, but gained a reputation as a fun sing-along song after a Boston Red Sox employee in charge of music at Fenway Park chose it in 1997 as a tribute to friend who had just given birth to a baby named Caroline. The tune caught on and has since been played at the bottom of the eighth in Fenway — and it has become widely recognized as a song of celebration at other public events.

MoonPie Over Mobile, Alabama

A massive, 600-pound electric MoonPie is dropped at the stroke of midnight in the MoonPie Over Mobile, Alabama, New Year’s Eve celebration.

Neither Mobile nor Alabama at large can claim credit as the home of the MoonPie, a chocolate-coated, graham cracker and marshmallow cookie. Honors for that go to Tennessee’s Chattanooga Bakery. But starting in 1952, moon-faced jesters tossed MoonPies from floats in the Mardi Gras parade in Mobile, home of the nation’s first Mardi Gras celebration 1703.

Mobile residents also like MoonPies — a lot. More than 4 million of the treats are consumed annually, and the city has adopted MoonPies as its unofficial emblem. The Chattanooga Bakery created the large electronic MoonPie as the featured attraction for the celebration.

Big Cheese Drop, Plymouth, Wisconsin

The cheesiest of offbeat celebrations may be, wait for it, the Sartori Big Cheese Drop in Plymouth, Wisconsin, the so-called “cheese capital of the world.” A giant wedge made to resemble Sartori’s award-winning BellaVitano Gold Cheese is dropped at 10 p.m. local time on New Year’s Eve.

Cheesemakers began popping up around the young city of Plymouth in the mid-19th century. In 1918, Plymouth was selected as the location of the National Cheese Exchange, which set the commodity price of bulk cheese. Today, Plymouth is home to some of the biggest cheese brands: Sargento, Sartori, Masters Gallery and Great Lakes Cheese.

Pickle Drop, Mount Olive, North Carolina

The party planners in Mount Olive, North Carolina, perfectly land a giant lighted pickle in a giant pickle jar to celebrate New Year’s Eve and the town’s reputation as the “unofficial pickle capital of North Carolina.”

Now in its 25th year, the Pickle Drop started in 1999 as a joke among a few employees of Mount Olive Pickles to announce the “official pickle and pepper of the millennium,” but it has since grown to an event that draws thousands of visitors.

Potato Drop, Boise, Idaho

Idahoans are rightly proud of their spuds, and a New Year’s Eve celebration in Boise every year celebrates the state’s reputation as the “potato capital of the world.” There, a “Glow Tato” created by local artists, fabricators and craftsmen flashes, glows and sparkles during the countdown to midnight and the new year.

“Spuddy Buddy,” the huge polystyrene resin potato, looks and feels real, and is durable enough for people to drape themselves over it while posing for selfies.

Duval Street, Key West Florida

If you really want to kick things up a notch on New Year’s Eve, head to Key West, Florida, for a celebration along Duval Street and historic Old Town.

Every year at midnight, a drag queen in an enormous red high-heeled shoe is lowered from the balcony to Duval Street. Legendary Key West drag queen “Sushi” was the star of the Red Shoe Drop for years, but retired in 2022. Different female impersonators have since been lowered from the balcony of the Bourbon St. Pub/New Orleans House complex.

A gigantic man-made conch shell will drop for the 30th time at Sloppy Joe’s in a tradition resulting from a collaboration with a local artist for a signature event to bring the crowds wandering Duval Street together in celebration.

At the Schooner Wharf Bar, cannons boom and the clock strikes midnight as a “pirate wench” is lowered from atop the towering mast of the tall ship America 2.0 docked at the city’s Historic Seaport.

In a ticketed “Gatsby New Year’s Eve” gala at First Flight Island Restaurant and Brewery, the original home of Pan American World Airways, a flight attendant in a period uniform will “land” at midnight in a replica Pan Am aircraft.

Grape Drop, Temecula, California

Giant grapes descend from the Temecula City Hall bell tower in this annual celebration of the Temecula Valley’s signature product. The event draws hundreds of visitors to Temecula’s Old Town every year. New changes to the Grape Drop, now its 14th year, include a special 9 p.m.-only countdown to make the event more appealing to families.

Also worth noting, it is a tradition in Spain and parts of South America to eat grapes to bring good luck and prosperity in the new year.

• Read the related story: This City’s Drop Is Just ‘Grape’