In Raleigh we have this tradition to drop a giant acorn from the sky on New Year’s Eve. For anyone’s who’s ever wondered why an acorn, or why “drop” anything at all, a few facts may help.

In 1991, Raleigh resident, John Watkins, thought of an idea, which became our tradition. His idea was to drop a giant acorn on New Year’s. The idea was made possible by a sculpture David Benson, who sculpted the idea. Watkins thought of the idea for the 200 year celebration.

The acorn is astonishing it’s made of copper and steel, weighs 1250 pounds and is 10 feet tall. Every year it is brought from Moore Square, where it sits the rest of the year, for the awaited night. It drops during First Night, which is a giant celebration for the New Year.

Even though it seems like Raleigh celebrates all together with the acorn drop, people still have their special traditions. Some people find it hard to stay up until midnight and just fall asleep.

“When I was little we would have a big family dinner and we would stay up late playing games until the ball dropped,” said Regan, Math teacher.

Some people have really simple traditions, and stick with the same thing from year to year.

“My family will usually get together and watch movies until midnight, when the ball drops,” said Matt Sloyer

Other people’s traditions vary slightly from year to year.

“My family usually watches movies either at our house or my grandmas, we watch the ball drop, then we continue watching movies until we fall asleep. This year we are going to South Carolina for Christmas and will probably stay there until after New Year’s,” said Will Ledet.

New Years has so many traditions; none are really the same.

All across the world they have different types of traditions. Some traditions can be very strange; like in Denmark they break dishes in their neighbor’s doors.  Instead of it being annoying people actually like the tradition because the person who has the most broken plates on their doorstep are the most lucky ones because that means they have lots of people who like them enough to waste a plate showing that they care enough to wish you luck on the coming year.

In Ecuador, people burn a scarecrow dummy. As midnight approaches families come outside and joins the others and burn scarecrows. The scarecrows are filled with wood and newspaper. Each family burns their own scarecrow to destroy all their bad luck from the last year and to scare away any other bad luck that might be lurking.

In Mexico, Brazil, and Bolivia they wear colorful underpants, each color represents a different thing. For example red means an amorous love life ahead, and yellow means gaining money or wealth.

On the list of strange New Year’s traditions a US tradition was included; the infamous New Year’s kisses. It might not seem strange to us here because we grew up with it. Someone from Brazil wearing their colorful underpants might think kissing on New Year’s is strange just like someone from the US might think wearing colorful underpants or breaking plates on neighbors doors is strange.