New Year's Eve 2022 In Wayne: Where To Celebrate

WAYNE, NJ — The new year is nearly here, and there are plenty of ways to ring in 2023 with family and friends in the Wayne area.

Here are some local events that might be of interest to you. Do you know anything else? Please let us know down below in the comments.

• Ring Ring Ring in 2023: Celebrate the new year with hundreds of arcade games, handcrafted cocktails and mocktails, and a premium appetizer buffet at the Willowbrook Mall's Dave and Buster's. Tickets are required for entry. The event begins at 9 p.m.
• Celebrate the New Year EARLY!: Before Dave and Buster's counts down to midnight, the restaurant will begin celebrations at 4 p.m. The earlier event includes food, arcade games and fun for the whole family. Once again, tickets are required.
• New Year's Eve at Cosmopolitan: Join Cosmopolitan for a celebration that includes a DJ, dancing, an elaborate dinner buffet and a five-hour open bar. The event runs from 8 p.m. to 1 a.m. Attendees must purchase tickets in advance.
• First Night Morris County: First Night Morris County 2023 provides a magnificent family-friendly, substance-free and alcohol-free celebration in the heart of Morristown. Fireworks will begin at 9:15 p.m., and the program concludes with the new Midnight Countdown Featuring Fireworks to Welcome in the New Year.
• New Year's Eve Celebration: Countdown to 2023! Enjoy three hours of unlimited bowling at Stryxe in Madison, plus amusements, specialty pizza, sweets, unlimited soft drinks and a champagne toast for guests 21+.

NEW YEAR ACROSS THE U.S.

In the United States, one of the most popular New Year’s Eve traditions is, of course, the dropping of the giant ball in New York City’s Times Square. Various cities have adopted their own iterations of the event — the Peach Drop in Atlanta, the Chick Drop in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and the giant Potato Drop in Boise, Idaho.

The end of one year and the beginning of another is often celebrated with the singing of “Auld Lang Syne,” a Scottish folk song whose title roughly translates to “days gone by,” according to Encyclopedia Britannica and History.com.

The history of New Year’s resolutions dates back 8,000 years to ancient Babylonians, who would make promises to return borrowed objects and pay outstanding debts at the beginning of the new year, in mid-March when they planted their crops.

According to legend, if they kept their word, pagan gods would grant them favor in the coming year. If they broke the promise, they would fall out of God’s favor, according to a history of New Year’s resolutions compiled by North Hampton Community College New Center in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

Many secular New Year’s resolutions focus on imagining new, improved versions of ourselves. The failure rate of New Year’s resolutions is about 80 percent, according to U.S. News & World Report. There are myriad reasons, but a big one is they’re made out of remorse for gaining weight, for example, and aren’t accompanied by a shift in attitude and a plan to meet the stress and discomfort of changing a habit or condition.