Celebrating the new year goes back thousands of years, it seems.

But partying on New Year’s Eve? This appears to be a more recent development.

From infoplease.com:

The celebration of the new year on January 1st is a relatively new phenomenon. The earliest recording of a new year celebration is believed to have been in Mesopotamia, c. 2000 B.C. and was celebrated around the time of the vernal equinox, in mid-March. A variety of other dates tied to the seasons were also used by various ancient cultures. The Egyptians, Phoenicians, and Persians began their new year with the fall equinox, and the Greeks celebrated it on the winter solstice.

According to TimeandDate.com:

Around the start of the 1900s, New Year’s Eve celebrations in America started to appear. The first Ball drop in Times Square was held in 1907. Around the same time, special events to welcome the New Year started to be organized on January 1.

Wikipedia notes:

Radio and television broadcasts of festivities from New York City helped to ingrain them in American pop culture; beginning on the radio in 1928, and on CBS television from 1956 to 1976 with ball drop coverage, Guy Lombardo and his band, The Royal Canadians, presented an annual New Year’s Eve broadcast from the ballroom of New York’s Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. The specials were best known for the Royal Canadians’ signature performance of “Auld Lang Syne” at midnight, which made the standard synonymous with the holiday.[24][25] Following Lombardo’s death in 1977, the competing program New Year’s Rockin’ Eve (which premiered for 1973 on NBC before moving to its current home, ABC, for 1975), succeeded the Royal Canadians as the dominant New Year’s Eve special on U.S. television. Its creator and host, Dick Clark, intended the program to be a modern and youthful alternative to Lombardo’s big band music. Including ABC’s special coverage of the year 2000, Clark would host New Year’s Eve coverage on ABC for 33 straight years. After suffering a stroke in December 2004 (resulting in Regis Philbin guest hosting for 2005), Clark retired as full-time host of the special for the 2006 edition, and was succeeded by Ryan Seacrest. Clark continued to make limited appearances on the special until his death in 2012.

But these are pretty limited accounts of how the New Year’s Eve celebrations took root.

If you find a good history, please share!

Meantime, here’s wishing you a safe New Year’s Eve and a Happy New Year!