Ring in the New Year With Fun Party Plans

Drinks, nibbles, party poppers, repeat – there’s got to be more to a New Year’s party than this – and there is! New Year’s Eve is celebrated around the world in fun, exciting, novel ways, and by tapping into them, you can bring your own New Year’s Eve party to life. Here’s how to do it!

The dark-haired stranger

Our Kiwi ‘first-footing’ tradition (the practice of trying to be the first to arrive at a neighbour’s house in the New Year) has its origins in Hogmanay. This Scottish celebration involves choosing a dark-haired man to be the first to enter a home on New Year’s Eve – something thought to bring good luck and prosperity to the household. Use Hogmanay as a fancy dress theme for your own New Year’s Eve Party by inviting male guests to dress as the dark-haired Scottish man, and women to dress as the Scottish housewife who welcomes him in. Just before mid-night, get everyone to vote on the best-dressed ‘couple’, and ask them to perform the ritual when the clock strikes twelve!

The great suitcase-race

In Mexico, it’s thought walking a suitcase around the block on New Year’s Eve will result in exciting travel plans in the coming year. Use this as your starter for a fun party game by loading a carry-on wheelie bag with 2 or 3 bricks (or something similarly weighty), then timing party guests as they take turns to walk around your block with the bag in tow (for safety’s sake, insist on walking, not running.) Station other party guests, in pairs, along the route to cheer on the walkers and make sure there’s no cheating!

New Year’s Resolutions – guess whose

New Year’s resolution-making isn’t new, according to some historians, who believe the Babylonians may have begun something similar thousands of years ago. To mark the New Year, this early culture, which dwelt in what we now refer to as the Middle-East, resolved to forgive each other debts, and return borrowed items. Use this resolution tradition as the basis for the following party game; early in the evening, give each guest a piece of note paper and a pen. Ask them to write down their most important New Year’s resolution on one side of the paper, and their name on the other. Collect up the papers, and number each one (on the resolution side), with a marker pen. Display the notes (resolution side showing) on a wall. Ask guests to jot down on a piece of paper which resolution they think belongs to which party guest. After the dot of midnight, get everyone together to reveal who made which resolution. The person who made the most correct guesses, wins!

It’s all Greek to me

If you’ve ever spotted a string of onions hanging on a door in Greece, it’s almost certainly a leftover from New Year’s Eve. In Greece, onions symbolise development and growth, and hanging them from an entranceway on New Year’s Eve bodes well for the household’s success in the coming year. Use this tradition as the basis for a party game. String up two or three onions, and make a loop at the end of the string that binds them. Next, pop a self-adhesive hook on the back of your exterior door. Arrange party-goers in groups of three. With groups taking turns, blindfold one of the three members and give them the string of onions. Their aim is to hang the onions on the hook, assisted by verbal directions, only, from the other two members of the team. The winning team is the one whose blindfolded member hangs the onions on the hook in the least time.

This New Year’s Eve, surprise your party guests with games that will keep them giggling all evening!