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Happy New Year!


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This year we decided to do Silvester (that's how we call New Year's Eve) with volunteer firefighters. Ice rain is predicted so we build a big 200 people tent on a hill close to a crossing between villages. So we could reach everything in case of emergency. All cars and recovery gear is placed close to it. We do a party with families and hope nothing will happen. Floodlights so kids can do skiing on the hill till midnight. The adults prepare some grilling/barbescue on fireplaces in the snow: Spanferkel= suckling pigs.

 

Mulled wine

 

Feuerzangenbowle:

Feuerzangenbowle is prepared in a bowl, similar to a fondue set, which usually is suspended over a small burner (rechaud). The bowl is filled with heated dry red wine spiced with cinnamon sticks, cloves and orange peel, similar to mulled wine. The Feuerzange, originally indeed tongs, nowadays is a special kind of grate to hold the Zuckerhut ("sugar hat"), a conical lump of sugar around seven inches long, mounted on top of the bowl. The sugar is soaked with rum and set alight, melting and caramelizing. The rum should have at least 54% alcohol per volume in order to burn properly. More rum is poured with a ladle until all the sugar has melted and mixed with the wine. The resulting punch is served in mugs while the burner keeps the bowl warm. More important than the drink itself is the ceremony, conveying a notion of Gemütlichkeit.

 

Bleigiessen = lead oracle?

You melt small lead icones (traditional ones which stay for luck) in a spoon over a torch and drop the lead in a water container. Then you interpret the shapes of the hardened lead to know what the new year will bring to you.

104px-Bleigiessen-Vorgang.jpg

 

Fireworks, firecrackers

In the village of my parents every family bought them. At midnight they left houses and fired them and everyone wished each other a happy new year. We at firefighters bought like 100 rockets.

 

No house cleaning

An old tradition delivered from the family of one of my grandmothers: Cleaning the house between x-mas and new year will give bad pain in the back for the whole year. We don't really believe that this is true, but this week is spend with kids for fun and not for a frustrating house cleaning. House cleaning is done at the weekend following the holy 3 kings day. Then the x-mas tree is removed and all the other orbnaments. This will give a lot of tree needles spread in the house so cleaning has to be done anyway.

 

 

I wish you all a happy new year, or as we say: Einen guten Rutsch und ein frohes neues Jahr.

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A very happy new year to you all.

 

BBQ and fireworks, sounds like a lot of fun to me.

 

I will be as miserable as sin, myself ! I have a chesty cough and heavy cold so will be stuck indoors. An early night with a hot Lemsip will be the limit of my celbration. :(

 

Have a great evening everyone. Be warm and safe out there.

 

Steve. :)

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Guten Rutsch, chattius, and happy new year to all fellow posters in the FDM forums!

 

Today, I will be celebrating with a bunch of friends in Essen, Germany. We'll see how long I'll stay here, but there will be something special about this new year - I'll be celebrating it an hour earlier :P

 

So, have a great time today guys, eat your fill, drink your fill (and maybe more!) and remember - there are only 4 certain things in a person's life:

 

- the arguments with your partner

- the food

- the booze

- and the last thing one more time

 

:D

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@ chattius, that sounds like a really cool time :D

 

@ Cider steve, being sick on the holidays stinks :( Hope you get better soon

 

New Years for me will be pretty boring. I'm a single parent so it will be just me and the kiddo hanging out at home. There's really no events around here that I can bring her to. We'll just kick back and watch a movie before midnight and then click over to watch the ball drop in Times Square

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No real big events in our family history, but since getting married, my wifes family has a tradition of serving grapes at midnight instead of champagne. Each person gets 12 grapes, and at the stroke of midnight you make a new wish for each grape that you eat. I don't fully understand the history behind it, but everybody even the kids stay up for grapes at midnight. I will have to investigate and get the history.

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Heya,

 

Sorry if there's already a thread about it, haven't seen any.

Here in France it's already new year, I wish you all best wishes for this new year!

 

:drinks:

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No real big events in our family history, but since getting married, my wifes family has a tradition of serving grapes at midnight instead of champagne. Each person gets 12 grapes, and at the stroke of midnight you make a new wish for each grape that you eat. I don't fully understand the history behind it, but everybody even the kids stay up for grapes at midnight. I will have to investigate and get the history.

 

Did ya remember to "Buy" the grapes this year, before they got sold out?

 

Have a good evening, tell everyone I said Hello.

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Well...I was stuck at home babysitting my little bro and sis and just watched tv...lots of fun. And I've just gotten back from work from a 9am-1pm new years day shift...so havent really celebrated in the new year this time round...

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My wife and I went to a latin themed event on the river. Great view of the fireworks and endless bar tab.

 

Excellent night out :D

Edited by dreeft
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I celebrated by staying home, playing Sacred 2, and I arrived at Llama8's infamous Electric Poo at the stroke of midnight.

 

Hopefully, that is NOT an indicator of the year to come...

 

Sounds like you really put your foot in it !

 

Nah.. Managed to keep out of it.. The werewolves and spiders, OTOH, weren't so lucky. Several of them stepped on it.

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I had this weekend for New Year's festivities, and today I feel like an alien.

:crazy:

My family, in Sri Lanka, has some interesting tradition where they try and present a few new crisp bills to children, nephews or neices. So, for example now, you'd get an envelope of a number of fresh, crisp one dollar bills, or if you were opting out for the more affluent payout, you could present, to as high a level of denomination as possible five dollar, ten dollar, twenty dollar etc.

 

A year back, we picked up a bowl of small oranges and presented them in a bowl to the owners of our favorite Chinese restaurant downtown for good luck. They were surprised, as well as delighted. Chattius, Aye to take break from cleaning! :bounce: Loco, that tradition is you have with the grapes is charming. I'm not surprised everyone wants to take part in this "cool" family tradition.

 

I hope our community has made it all across the year mark safely and we'll be checking posts twice today to make sure everyone's found their way back home to FDM. I've got some good resolutions put together I think. I wanna focus even better on my sugars by going to the veggie grocery store more. I find that doing simple things like just getting there and making sure my fridge is stocked with fresh veggies keeps me full with spinach. If I can keep to this resolution, I'd be able to say no to evil dr. mcd's inviting taunts from down the street ^^

 

A Happy New Year to my family, my friends, our members here on this site who keep coming back to check up on us, to crack a joke, build a build or just show up with a hug or a few extra Tylenols on much-needed days like this.

 

Best Wishes!

 

 

:)

 

gogo

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A tad late, but here's for a successfull year 2011 for all the fellow DM:ers!

 

For a once, this new year passed me by peacefully. Just watched the city's fireworks with friends and went sleeping. There's some customs here too, but certainly not as interesting as some I've read about. Sad or not, it's more like a national get wasted day around here. :P

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