The New Year Celebrations Around the World

①New Year's Day is one of the few universal public holidays in the world, when most people do not need to go to work. While some of us celebrate it only over a day and a night, for others it may be along festival lasting for about one week. ②In the last 30 years businessmen have taken the opportunity to promote more goods and to hold lots of end-of-year sales. The majority of people would then take their time to go shopping with high spirits.

③The customs for people in the world to celebrate the coming of the New Year also vary with places and cultures, ranging from watching fireworks to eating special foods. Some customs are very surprising oreven amusing, such as the Thai custom of throwing water to each other, or the Spanish custom of eating 12 grapes as the clock chimes twelve midnight.

Many of these New Year’s customs are intended tobring good luck during the new year ahead. For example, several days before the New Year’s Day, Chinese people will begin to decorate the streets by setting up redlanterns and Chinese knots on a large scale. Families will give a thorough cleaning totheir houses.④All sorts of delicious foods will be prepared on the Eve for a family get-together to welcome the coming new year.

In the country of Colombia, burning "Mr. Old Year" is a New Year's tradition. It requires the participation of the entire family. It is a lot of fun; they create a big stuffed male doll that represents the old year. Then they stuff the doll with a large choice of different materials. Sometimes they put some little fireworks in it to make it more exciting at the time they burn it. Also, they put things inside that they don't want anymore, objects that can bring sadness or bad memories. ⑤These things will burn with the old year, meaning that they want to forget all the bad things that happened during the past year. They dress the man with old clothes from each member of the family. Then, on New Year's Eve at midnight, they set the doll on fire. This symbolizes burning the past and getting ready to start a happy New Year without bad memories of the past.