Where To Celebrate New Year’s Eve 2022 Around Greater Alexandria

ALEXANDRIA, VA —First Night Alexandria Festival of Music & More, is back, offering entertainment throughout New Year's Eve to ring in 2023.

First Night Alexandria has been a tradition since 1994, offering a variety of performers at venues across the city. This year's event will run from noon to midnight. A fireworks show will kick off at minute and last approximately 15 minutes.

Venues for performances include George Washington Masonic National Memorial, Durant Community Arts Center and Market Square. Fireworks can be viewed at various locations, including Market Square, George Washington Masonic National Memorial, Canal Center Plaza, Rivergate Park, Oronoco Bay Park, Founders Park, Waterfront Park, Windmill Hill Park, Ford's Landing and Jones Point Park.

First Night Alexandria is a ticketed event. For more information and tickets, visit www.firstnightalexandria.org.

Another event near greater Alexandria is the Workhouse Arts Center's New Year's Eve with comedians Anthony DeVito Dewayne White and hosted by Apple Brown Betty. The event includes 7 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. shows at the McGuireWoods Gallery, building W16. The later show comes with music until midnight and a champagne toast.

Here is a look at some additional events happening near greater Alexandria:

• The Seldom Scene, Eastman String Band, & Wicked Sycamore at The Birchmere
• New Year's Eve Cocktail Party at The Light Horse
• New Year's Eve with Black Coffee at Blackwall Hitch
• No. 9 Lounge's New Years Eve 2022 Bash
• More New Year's Eve dining options at Alexandria restaurants
• Toast to the New Year at Capital Wheel in National Harbor
• Wilson Wonderland New Year's Eve

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 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.