Most cities in the world mark the New Year tonight with fireworks and parties. In Paris, the French will light up the Eiffel Tower with a marvellous fireworks display, while in New York tourists will watch a ball dropping in the frigid cold air. New Yorkers are going to bars all over the city and pop champagne while ringing in the New Year. But in some other cities, in addition to fireworks and champagne, there are other traditions steeping from age-old concepts of good luck and well wishes, from the idea of casting off demons from the past, from the basic human desire to move beyond the past and into a better future. Every nation, and even every town, has its own unique way to celebrate the arrival of a new year, but it is a common theme across every facet of humanity to yearn for purification and for a fresh start as a new calendar begins.
