New Year in Great Britain flows smoothly from Christmas parties and continues the fun until January 2-3. In most cities and towns in the United Kingdom, New Year's Eve is quiet. That is, his population, of course, celebrates, but quietly, at home.
The exception is major tourist cities like Edinburgh, Birmingham, Manchester or Glasgow. They celebrate the New Year in a noisy, bright, fervent way. Most fun people are, of course, tourists. But tourists are not a single state, but the “gathering of all nations”, the revival of Babylon.
Apart from all this New Year's hype is London.
Celebration in the English capital
New Year's Eve in the capital of Great Britain is, of course, an extraordinary event and a long soul. Local, along with tourists, begin to prepare for it in advance. Two or three months.
If you miss the moment, then for the tourist the cost of the opportunity to celebrate the New Year in London will increase at times! This should be remembered when applying for a visa at the last moment.
Seasonal clothing
Winter in England is rainy. Very reminiscent of Russian November. Cloudy, damp, windy. The temperature ranges from +5 to +10 degrees Celsius. It’s a miracle if it snows for at least one or two days.
But the local weather is not upset at all. They can wear sandals and uggs even in July, even in December. With an evening dress or a sheepskin coat - also does not play a role. Therefore, the picture where the lady in the mink coat and flip flops in the rain should not be bewildering. For the islanders, this is normal. But tourists are better off dressing in accordance with their thermal preferences, because to catch a cold and meet the holiday date with a temperature is a little pleasant pleasure and it is completely useless.
How to celebrate New Year in London
Let's find out. New Year's Eve in London is not much different from New Year's Eve in other parts of the world. The islanders also enjoy spending time with family, meeting friends, going to clubs and parties and, of course, visiting fairs!
Traditional Christmas and New Year's markets are an amazingly beautiful sight! In addition to the fact that at such events you can find unusual and interesting gizmos made by masters, they also serve traditional British dishes: Yorkshire pudding, a closed pie with beef stewed in beer or red wine, as well as countless sweets and drinks. Sellers, as a rule, are dressed in Victorian costumes at this time of the year, which, coupled with colorful illumination and a cheerful noisy crowd, creates the feeling of a fairy tale!
Anyone who is interested in how to celebrate New Year in London can find the answer on the city's busiest and most famous shopping street - Oxford Street, where holiday sales are held. On New Year's Eve, discounts on branded items can reach 80%!
The British themselves love not so much to receive as to give gifts. Therefore, during the New Year holidays, literally everything that can be presented as a presentation is swept from the shelves! As the New Year is celebrated in London, empty and ruined store shelves demonstrate well. Hot goods are, of course, bags, cosmetics, mugs and other small things. However, they can present a TV and even upholstered furniture. And yet, most gifts come at Christmas. New Year is, rather, an exchange of courtesies in the form of symbolic presents and trifles.
Where is New Year celebrated in London?
London is a modern metropolis, so there are a myriad of places to celebrate the New Year for every taste, whether it be a theme party or a banquet with classical music. Despite the British conservatism and their commitment to tradition, all the most unusual and modern can be found in London.
Clubs, bars, restaurants
A bar or pub is a traditional meeting place for the subjects of the crown. Nobody meets at home in the kitchen. Pub and only pub! Tables are booked in advance, starting in September. The best places with a delicious menu, lower cost and proximity to the center diverge first. Therefore, if you think about booking a table in December, then the best that you can expect are high prices, or even a complete lack of seats.
Free places to visit
On New Year's Eve, London opens the doors of various museums, exhibitions and parks. They are divided into paid ones and those into which, having stood a long line, you can enter without paying a single penalty.
If everyone chooses the first option to their taste, then the second seems attractive to absolutely everyone.
Here is just a short list of where, when celebrating the New Year in London, you can have fun for free:
- The Natural History Museum is located in the very center of London. The huge, incredibly beautiful building of the time of Queen Victoria is filled with many rare exhibits. To fully examine them and not to miss anything interesting, it will take 5 hours, or even more.
- British museum. One of the most famous museums in London. However, he tells not about the city and not about the country, as one might guess from its name, but about the history of ancient peoples and civilizations.
- The Horniman Museum is located in the middle of a beautifully landscaped garden on Forest Hill (south of London). It is a traditional museum specializing in anthropology, natural history and musical instruments.
- Science has always fascinated children. That's why the Museum of Science is always a great option to entertain your children and make them learn a lot. In a family style, he presents objects related to topics such as astronomy, physics, chemistry, time, light, technological and medical achievements. There is no doubt that a couple of hours at this museum is the perfect way to have a great time with your family in London on New Year's Eve.
- Hyde Park, "Winter's Tale" - a place of fun and entertainment, especially for children. There are many attractions here, such as a giant Ferris wheel, Santa Claus house, circus show and ice skating. There is also a wide selection of original restaurants, such as an ice bar, a Swiss chalet or even a Fire Pit bar, where you can fry marshmallows over a wood fire. It’s also a Christmas market with more than 200 wooden stalls selling all kinds of wonderful things for the holiday season.
New Year traditions
As a separate topic of New Year's traditions in England does not exist. New Year's Eve flows smoothly from the celebration of Christmas. Therefore, these two holidays the islanders combine together.
Postcards
Perhaps the first and main tradition, which originates in the distant London of 1843, is the sending of postcards with the wishes of a happy New Year and Christmas. Such cards must be sent to all relatives, friends and work colleagues. Otherwise, your disregard for the old tradition will be considered a personal insult. Not responding to a postcard is also considered bad form. Exceptions are made only for foreigners celebrating the New Year in London. Traditions oblige you to take part in this amusing entertainment, because at times the number of postcards can be measured not in pieces, but in kilograms.
Since all the garbage in the UK is sorted and disposed of separately, for Christmas cards, after the end of the holidays, next to large shops there are tanks for the disposal of this good.
Christmas tree
Prince Albert, husband of Queen Victoria, one of the most prominent figures in the history of Great Britain, introduced fashion for the installation of the Christmas tree.
In 1841, a New Year tree appeared in Windsor Castle in order to please his beloved wife and children. For all subsequent years, the fir tree wandered from the castle to the garden and back, until it reached such a size that it ceased to fit under the ceiling arches. After which it was decided to leave her in the garden, where she lives to this day.
Christmas trees on Christmas Eve are in almost all houses. Special holiday fans place a Christmas tree in each room.
Fireplace
The heart of the house is its hearth. The decoration of the fireplace is approached with the same seriousness as when choosing a Christmas tree. A traditional gift sock, a glass of Sante wine and a Rudolph carrot take their place by the fireplace on Christmas night. It is believed that Santa enters the house through a chimney and leaves gifts for obedient children in his socks. He puts the balovnikov black, spotting little coals.
Illuminations
Garlands and lanterns show well how to celebrate the New Year in London. The traditions of decorating your home encourage each owner, whether he has a house or an apartment, even if a small piece of land in two squares is strewn with lights. From here not only parks and alleys look fabulous, but also small alleys and dead ends. Everyone seeks to do better than that of a neighbor, a sort of unspoken competition for the title of the most fabulous and Christmas house.
Christmas wreaths
On each door you can see a variety of wreaths. The traditional ones are made of holly, but after the fashion there appear more original and bright wreaths of glass, Christmas-tree decorations, metal, etc.
Songs
Traditional Christmas songs about Jesus Christ and the time of his birth are currently sounded mostly in temples. On the streets, more and more often you can hear secular songs. One of them, unnoticed in 1858, became the anthem of the New Year and Christmas. Of course, these are Jingle Bells in a multitude of options. Another 1984 hit, creating an atmosphere of celebration and expectation of a miracle, is the Last Christmas of the British duo Wham.
Candles
Traditional table wreaths with candles are of particular importance. The wreath is usually made of juniper, four candles are installed in it. Three purple and one pink. Start to burn in advance. The first purple candle is set on fire four more weeks before Christmas. Every next Sunday, one more candle. Purple candles symbolize the liturgical color of the Christmas Lent. The pink candle that lights up on the third Sunday of the Christmas Lent symbolizes the joyful expectation of Christ coming into this world.
For Christmas itself, a fifth candle is placed in the center of the wreath. It can be white or red. It is lit at Christmas and symbolizes Jesus Christ - "the light of the world."
Christmas log
Long before the advent of the New Year tree, the islanders used Christmas or Christmas logs.
In England, they began to be puzzled by his harvest a year before Christmas. The largest tree was selected in the forest, cut down and left to lie. For the holiday, only the father of the family had the right to bring logs from this tree into the house. All households treated logs as living things. He was poured with honey, wine, sprinkled with grain.
Further, the log was placed in a fireplace or stove and set on fire. It was supposed to burn twelve days and nights.
It is believed that ash from a burned log fire could heal from diseases and protect from evil spirits. Therefore, people carried it in a bag around their neck and scattered it around the house, trying to protect it from evil spirits.
To date, few people in the UK use the Christmas tree log, most resort to its counterpart - a thick Christmas candle.
Santa Claus
In Great Britain, this grandfather in a red sheepskin coat with a white beard and a reindeer harness is called "Father Christmas". He travels through the sky and gives gifts to children.
A month before the holiday, large shops and entertainment centers arrange meetings with Santa. In the morning, a line of children and their parents lining up in his mobile home wishing to take a picture, get a sweet present or gift and personally tell Santa their desire for Christmas. Usually such meetings are free and cause a storm of emotions. In addition, each child Santa is issued a certificate that he was good and deserved what he asks.
Fireworks
Many residents and guests of London are waiting for New Year's Eve for the sake of one significant event - this is a traditional fireworks show near Waterloo and Westminster. Every year, thousands of people gather to watch the New Year's fireworks in London in these areas.
It became so popular that the best venues for the 2018 meeting were divided into sectors. Access to them was granted only to ticket holders celebrating the New Year in London. Reviews of tourists on various forums and social networks colorfully indicate that the show was incredibly spectacular and grandiose in execution. Many plan to celebrate the next New Year in the capital of Great Britain.
Photos of London on New Year’s left after the trip will forever remain a warm memory, not only in the photo album, but also in the heart.