Well then? There is less and less time left until the New Year and Christmas, the air is filled with a festive mood, which means it’s time to think, remember, and share with you how Americans celebrate the main winter holidays! Here are the Christmas and New Year traditions in the USA that I especially like!
Christmas tree
Yes, in the USA there is also a tradition of putting up the “main” Christmas tree in city squares! In New York, the main tree is located near Rockefeller Center, and in Washington the Christmas tree stands near the White House.
The tree lighting ceremony is very similar to what happens where we live, too. Crowds of people gather around the tree, several stars are invited, bands and performers appear, and at a certain time the tree lights up with bright lights, everyone is happy and delighted!
The only difference is that both the main tree of this or that city and the secondary ones appear a little earlier. If in Kyiv the tree is opened on St. Nicholas Day, on December 19, then in the USA the opening of the main tree happens in the first days of December!
Santa Con
One of my favorite holidays is Santa Con, or the Santa Claus Parade. The holiday is bright, unusual and… drunken! This holiday takes place all over the country on different dates in December. The largest parades are usually in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Chicago. The point of the holiday is to dress up as Santa Claus or any other outfit connected with Christmas (for example, as a Christmas tree), and together with other Santas walk in a noisy crowd along a certain route in the city center. This route is not just a walk, but a march and visiting bars. It is precisely because of the bars that the holiday is considered drunken. After Santa Con, local newspapers and city internet portals keep publishing selections of photos of drunken Santas who dance striptease in the street, lie around under trash cans, make trouble, hug and kiss, relieve themselves, etc.
“Ugly” sweater party
One of my most favorite traditions. Do you remember the film “Bridget Jones’s Diary” and the sweater with a huge reindeer that her mom gave her for Christmas? That is an ugly sweater. In translation, Christmas ugly sweaters with reindeer, snowmen, Christmas trees, etc. were originally conceived as a Christmas sweater — a sweater with a huge snowman, reindeer, snowflakes, Santa Claus, and so on. It is considered ugly because you will never wear it anywhere again; in my opinion it is funny, but cute. And in the USA it is considered accepted to wear these sweaters for Christmas and for the New Year. Now, of course, people choose brighter ugly sweaters. Pre-Christmas clothing stores are hung with whole collections of ugly sweaters, although many Americans make sweaters themselves!
Christmas sales
Right after Thanksgiving (the last Thursday of November) Christmas sales begin in the USA! If you are planning to go to the USA in December, then plan some shopping for yourself, because prices and discounts during this period of the year are really very выгодные! We have material about shopping in New York, with useful links, store addresses, etc. Read Shopping in New York: tips, hints and store addresses
New Year and Christmas
You probably know that Christmas is a more significant holiday in the USA than the New Year. If in our country Ded Moroz visits all children on New Year’s night, then in the USA this happens on Christmas night. And the tree in the USA is not a New Year tree, but also a Christmas tree.
If you decided to celebrate Catholic Christmas in the USA and you have no friends or relatives there, then you should not be upset because of this. Christmas is a purely family holiday. It is on this day that people go home to their close and dear ones. If you have no friends or relatives — you have nowhere to go. (Christmas is celebrated with a Christmas program in a hotel, etc., everyone goes there with relatives).
Another matter is New Year. This is not such a family holiday as Christmas, which many people celebrate in the street, in clubs, restaurants, house parties.
New Year ball
Probably for many people in the USA the ball drop at Times Square is associated with the New Year! This is really a very popular and beautiful spectacle, which is better… to watch on TV. First, you will be able to see the whole square and the concert in high quality and from a good angle. Second, it will still be luck for you to find yourself on the square if you want to go, and it is just as hard to determine a part of the square from which you can see the street along which the crowd is moving — it is unattainable on TV. To spend such an amount of time in a crowd is not very pleasant; I repeat: watch everything on TV.
A little about traditions. At the entrance to the Times Square perimeter you have bags hanging, which fulfill their purpose only once a year — on New Year, and on December 1 at Times Square, on December 1 they arrange the “funeral” of the bag, they say goodbye to the bag there, tell it “rest in пухом,” the bag is thrown, crumbled and trampled, and on New Year the bag “comes to life” and fulfills its purpose.
They say that many other cities have again taken note of the ball drop in New York and organize ball drops in their cities, but in other forms and each with its own details.
These are the American Christmas traditions. Happy upcoming holidays to you, and let your mood and wishes come true regardless of whether you are in the USA or in any other country!