How Many of These Facts about New Year’s Did You Know?
Jackpot Capital casino has earned a reputation as the top mobile jackpot casino! In addition to the idea of having the chance to win big jackpots, Jackpot Capital also offers you this same great chance when you are playing on our mobile casino app!
At this happy time of the year, we would like to demonstrate to you, our present and hopefully future gamers, that we offer a lot more than great online gaming, a wide range of promotions, great bonuses, a lot of games and Banana Jones on top of it all!
Did You Know?
We are also a fountain of knowledge! In this article, we would like to tell you many small and large tidbits about New Year’s Day and of course New Year’s Eve. So, did you know….
The Ball at Times Square
The most famous celebration is when hundreds of thousands of people crowd into Times Square in the center of Manhattan to watch the “ball” drop in the last seconds of the old year and to ring in the new year. The reason this is the most famous celebration of New Year’s Day is because it is New York City after all!
Today we use the second massive ball in the Times Square celebration. The older ball was made of wood and iron and had 25 incandescent light bulbs illuminating it. This ball was replaced in 2008. The new ball weighs 1000 pounds which is about 450 kilos! The ball is not made of wood and iron at all. It is made of the most famous crystal in the world, Waterford Crystal. It has several thousand small light bulbs in it to illuminate it. Now, as we are more environmentally conscious, all of the incandescent light bulbs have been replaced by LED bulbs!
These LED bulbs will probably last for a thousand years since they are used only on New Year’s Eve!
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Confetti
As heavy as the ball is, the amount of confetti that is dropped on Times Square every year is at least double! Upwards of 2000 pounds of confetti are dropped on Times Square every New Year’s Eve.
Babylon Was Famous Thousands of Years Ago
We are not certain that Babylon was the first place to celebrate New Year’s Eve but we have records that indicate that they celebrated the beginning of the New Year as far back as 2500 years before the birth of Jesus.
Kissing
Just as we are not 100% sure that the New Year was first celebrated in Babylon, we are also not positive when the custom of kissing as the New Year rings in began. The best research to this date has this custom beginning in ancient Rome.
Many Ways to Celebrate New Year’s Day
In many cultures, people eat round foods at their New Year’s Day feast because round foods signify having a well-rounded year. Even though we always chop or otherwise slice cabbage, it is still considered a “round” food for New Year’s feast purposes.
The Sephardic Jews, who developed their culture in the Iberian peninsula, developed a full-fledged ritual around the Jewish New Year in which they eat beets, honey, and several other foods always signifying something - sweetness, round shape, and more - almost in the nature of a pun around that food.
For example, one of their food customs includes eating or in most cases looking at a cooked fish head. The blessing for the New Year that involves the fish head is that we should be at the head not at the tail in all matters in the coming year.
New Year’s Resolutions
It is very common for people to see the New Year as the chance to grow in their spirituality, in their relationships, and in their habits. In the west, we call these “vows” New Year’s resolutions. Societies that developed prayers to go along with their New Year’s celebration, often asked their God to give them the strength to make good resolutions and to keep them.
In fact, many people have used New Year’s resolutions to quick smoking, drinking, over-eating, and even gambling. At Jackpot Capital, we see gaming as a form of entertainment so we applaud all gamers who resolve to see gaming in that same light in the coming year!
Auld Lang Syne
This song was written only about 200 years ago by the Scottish poet Robert Burns. Most people only know a few words of the song or of the poem. The song begins “should old acquaintance be forget and never brought to mind´. New Year’s is a great time to reconnect with old friends or family members we have lost contact with.
Calendars
We use the Gregorian calendar which replaced the Julian calendar in 1582 when the Roman Catholic Church accepted it as the one correct calendar. There are many calendars in the world. Perhaps the most famous calendars aside from the Gregorian are the Jewish calendar, the Moslem calendar, and the Chinese calendars.
The Jewish and Moslem calendars are both lunar rather than solar as the Gregorian calendar is. The Moslem calendar doesn’t have a leap year so every twenty seven years or so, it is possible for the Islamic New Year to coincide with the Gregorian New Year. The Jewish calendar has leap years so the Jewish New Year always comes out in September or the first week of October.
The Chinese calendar is based on the sun AND the moon....and a few other planets, and is closely connected to the zodiac calendar we're familiar with. Each year is assigned an animal (ie. year of the rat, year of the chicken, etc.) and the New Year celebrations are loud and public with lots of fireworks, as one might expect.
In Islamic culture, the New Year is not an important holiday. Islam has two very important holidays that they celebrate with family for three and four days respectively. The New Year may be celebrated quietly with family and friends.
The Jewish New Year is both a serious religious day and a happy family day - not the party day that we're used to. Religious Jews pray lengthy prayers especially for this holiday and then go home to celebrate with a very festive meal!
Sydney is not the First
We often think of Sydney, Australia as the first place to ring in the New Year. Actually, the New Year begins at the International Dateline and therefore any inhabited location just west of this “line” would celebrate the New Year earlier than Sydney. The honor goes to Kiribati, a small island in the Pacific Ocean. Kiribati will be the first to celebrate the New Year unless it is submerged in the future by rising seas owing to global warming!
American Samoa is on the other side of the International Dateline so it is the last place in the world to celebrate the new day.
Celebrate with Moderate Drinking and Some Lucky Gaming
We wish everyone a Happy New Year. Please let someone else drive if you have had a bit too much champagne! Also, resolve this year to make online gaming at Jackpot Capital one of the most fun pastimes you take part in!
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