New Year’s Eve 2023: Where To Find Events Around Vienna

VIENNA, VA — Between family-friendly celebrations and adult parties, there's no shortage of New Year's Eve events around Vienna to help welcome 2024.

There are Noon Year's Eve events to help the kiddos celebrate the new year early. Patrick Henry Library is hosting a Noon Year's Eve party from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Dec. 30. Then, the Cedar Park Shopping Center will host the Vienna Noon Year's Eve on Dec. 31 from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. There will be a 12 p.m. balloon drop countdown, pop-up artisan market and vendor fair, DJ music, face painting, airbrush tattoos, "nonprofit in residence" Committee for Helping Others, giveaways and more.

Here is a look at some additional events happening near Vienna:

• Jammin Java's Rocknoceros New Year's Eve Ball and Rocknoceros New Year’s Eve Ball - Afternoon Show
• Jammin Java's Ultimate 80's NYE Dance Party with DJ D
• New Year's Eve Party - Cocktails Around The World at Inca Social
• New Years Eve Party 2024 - Tysons Corner
• The Grandiose New Year's Eve Gala
• Kids New Year's Eve at Shipgarten
• Watch Night Falls Church
• New Year's Eve with the Legwarmers at State Theatre
• Seventh Annual Wilson Wonderland NYE Celebration
• New Year's Eve Masquerade Ball at Clarendon Ballroom
• DMV New Year's Eve Casino Night
• First Night Alexandria
• Big Night DC New Year's Eve Extravaganza at Gaylord National Harbor
• Noon Yards Eve at the Yards DC

In the United States, one of the most popular New Year’s Eve traditions is the dropping of the giant ball in New York City’s Times Square. Other U.S. cities have adopted iterations of the ball drop — the Chick Drop in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and the giant Potato Drop in Boise, Idaho, for example.

Virginia's twist on the ball drop includes events like Chincoteague Island's Pony Island Horseshoe Drop & Costume Promenade, Cape Charles's Dropping of the Crab Pot, Fincastle's New Year's Eve Bell Ringing and Portsmouth's Olde Towne Scottish Walk.

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.