New Year Celebrations

Hogmanay is the traditional Scottish New Year's Eve festival celebrated on December 31. It is a huge affair which often includes many celebrations and parties for which tickets are sold.

The Equator lies to the south, about a half day's bumpy ride by bus, but the island's elevation negates the tropical latitude. We were dozing, tucked in sleeping bags, when a rousing chorus of Gloria Hallelujah and O Come All Ye Faithful woke us.

Gawai is an annual festival held every June in the longhouses of lowland tribes in Sarawak. It is a national event, promoted by local brews and municipalities, but in reality everyone leaves the cities empty to return home or visit friends. Gawai is a harvest festival, a New Year celebration, religious ritual and family reunion all at the same time.

Woodford, held on Queensland's Sunshine Coast hinterland one hour north of Brisbane, is now one of the largest folk festivals in the world, hosting more than 2,000 performers and 120,000 visitors from throughout Australia and overseas for six days from December 27 to January 1 each year.

New Years was great. Friends, food, fun - it had it all. Too bad it only comes once a year. Or does it? With some travel and a hefty supply of good cheer, you can celebrate the New Year all year long.

One of the first questions my Russian acquaintances ask me is, "Have you ever celebrated the New Year in Russia?" When I say I haven't, they always laugh. Until I've met the New Year Russian-style, they tell me, I have never really celebrated it at all. My attempts to tell them about the Times Square parties leave them unimpressed.

The air is usually bitingly cold as each New Years Day, thousands don outlandish costumes and strut to the thumping beat of string bands in a colorful Philadelphia spectacle, The Mummers Parade. They're called Mummers (probably after the German word for disguise), they're mostly white, blue-collar guys who every January 1 - except 1919 and 1934 - have strutted up Broad Street decked out in wild array from head to spray-painted toe in one big absurd, hilarious, fraternal party.

The Chinese calendar is based on lunar-solar cycles. Five cycles of twelve years each make up the entire lunar cycle of 60 years.

Thus, across the Land of the Morning Calm, New Year's Day will be celebrated twice-once according to international convention, and once according to the lunar calendar.