Confetti! Balloons! And champagne, for sure!

Ringing in the New Year of yesterday


HISTORY EXTRA is a weekly pictorial history feature showcasing the Miami Valley's rich heritage. If you have a unique set of historic photos found in your parents' or grandparents' attic that depicts the past in the Miami Valley, contact Lisa Powell at (937) 225-2229 or at Lisa.Powell@coxinc.com

Thursday night marks a new beginning. A fresh start. Some might consider it a do-over. It’s New Year’s Eve.

At the stroke of midnight champagne corks will pop, couples will kiss, and friends old and new will make toasts looking toward a brand new year.

The new year was first celebrated in Mesopotamia in 2000 BCE. The first day of the year was dedicated to the Roman god Janus, for whom the month January is named. Janus has two faces: one looking backwards at what has been, and the other looking forward, to things to come. Therefore, he was regarded as the god of thresholds, and of beginnings and ends.

The day of renewal is celebrated around the world in a multitude of ways. Streets are filled with dancers, drums and fire crackers in China. In Korea families prepare food for their ancestor’s spirits, and in Australia — one of the first countries to reach the new year because it sits near the International Date Line — a fireworks display lights up the sky over Sydney Harbour.

“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.” — Eleanor Roosevelt

The first baby born in the new year is still a traditional honor in most communities and a photo of that newborn will still find a way into the pages of local newspapers, including this one.

Residents of the Miami Valley have popped champagne corks at local taverns, eaten weiners and sauerkraut, and tooted horns and noisemakers with friends at a variety of haunts over the years.

In 1981 the Dayton Daily News reported that area revelers young and old “danced and gyrated” to the new year. While adults watched an exotic belly dancer at Ichabod’s in Dayton’s Oregon District, area students grooved at Rollerworld near the Dayton Mall during an all-night skating party.

The Bus Stop Disco, the Sweetwater night club and the Daytonian Hotel were also among the popular local spots to make a toast that year.

In Yellow Springs a thousand people welcomed in 1983 during one of the village’s first ball drops.

"A tall, dark mustachioed 'Baby New Year' was cheered and hundreds of helium balloons, confetti and champagne corks took off skyward to the strains of Auld Lang Syne as the bank clock registered its most recognized time of the year," reported a story in the Dayton Daily News.

The event was organized by Yellow Springs resident Prentice Tomas and what came to be known as the “Times Square, Yellow Springs Committee.”

The ball descended slowly from the top of a tree trimming truck, sparkling and illuminated with “83,” the story reported. The mustachioed “Baby New Year” proclaimed, “It’s going to be a bumper year.”

Thirty years later, the tradition continues. Revelers still fill the intersection of Short Street and Xenia Avenue in Yellow Springs as a ball drops to the countdown to the new year.

Tomorrow night that gathering of friends and loved ones and others across the region will again reflect on the past and make toasts to a prosperous and healthy future.

Happy New Year!

“In the New Year, may your hand always be stretched out in friendship, but never in want.” — Traditional Irish toast

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