A bit of New Year fun and - Happy New Year!

It’s a translation of a black humour text very popular in Runet (author unknown). I guess it’s PG-14 for 2 bad words (asterisked). I think you’ll understand that though almost all of us have had at least one New Year party like those described here, the text is a bit of an exaggeration. So if you don’t like it, don’t kick me. Neither I’m all that bad, nor all the Russians.
Hey, fellow citizens, господа хорошие, а вам, если желаете ознакомиться с оригиналом, - сюда, например - http://mp3forum.ru/topic108220.html

How to See the New Year in

To Those Hit by the Global Financial Crisis or
by the New Year Existential Angst

From Russia with Love

Author Unknown

December has come at last. Snowflakes are slowly falling on the ground. Everything is white and covered with snow. The New Year night is approaching. If you still have no idea of how to see the New Year in, we can offer you several party scenarios: partying with your parents, partying alone, partying with people little known to you, and partying with old bosom friends.
(to be continued)

(continued)
Seeing the New Year in With Your Parents

To be resorted to in emergency, when precisely on the New Year night the world turns its back on you. Then you go and:
- stuff yourself on ravioli and standing salad with mayonnaise, you know your Mum won’t be able to think of any other holiday treat for lack of imagination,
- drink champagne, listening to the chimes moodily and wishing heartily “Oh no, never again!”
- drink vodka with your Pa and champagne with your Ma,
- writhe with envy to your younger brother (sister) who escaped to meet his (her) friends at 00:05 sharp,
- in a duet with your mother you cheerfully sing a song about two lovers whose love was stronger than death and who died in the end,
- in a duet with your father you sing a maudlin song about the heroic death of a soldier dating back to WWII; it begins to grow on you,
- your earring or your nose piercing piece catches on your scarf and you leave bleeding profusely (it’s an obligatory part of your New Year luck),
- try to phone your ex and give him (her) your best regards and season’s greetings. The ex is certainly out with his (her) new love, and you wish aloud his (her) mother would practice contraception even during the menopause so as not to repeat the mistakes of the youth,
- ringing every doorbell you go and look for your father who has gone to say his season’s greetings to neighbours; you find him peacefully sleeping at home embracing the washing machine,
- smoke in a sad and lonely way standing bolt upright on the window sill, as you have opened the upper part of the window frame to open a chink for the tobacco smoke to seep through,
- listen to merry laughter, the hilarious uproar and petards going off in the street recalling all the foul words you have learnt since you started attending kindergarten,
- invite yourself to toboggan in the yard with neighbours who are already completely squint-eyed,
- pester and harass all the married men (women) within a mile’s distance,
- get a blow with a heavy boot on the head (shards of a broken bottle in the stomach) from smb.’s husband (wife) when sliding down a snowhill on a piece of cardboard,
- clink vodka bottles instead of glasses and chase it down with champagne,
- blow your nose on the scarf (the scarf is not necessarily to be yours), it will create a festive mood for sure,
- stop recognizing your company and try to follow some total strangers,
- come to with a start and find yourself sitting in the snow half naked. Everybody around is laughing,
- further notes illegible.

(continued)
Partying Alone in Proud Solitude

To spite everybody. So, you:
- darkly prepare a huge bowl of salad with mayonnaise and a huge bowl of Russian salad,
- buy three bottles of champagne and 10 bottles of vodka. Put champagne away till the Women’s Day, let’s break traditions,
- unplug your phone and lock the doors. Let them think you are seeing the New Year in somewhere in Egypt, use your brains and PhotoShop later,
- hang New Year garlands on your ears and put on a smiling bunny mask,
- it’s better to start merrymaking beforehand, at 22:00. At first you’ll feel sad drinking alone, but by midnight you’ll start relishing it,
- at midnight listen to the New Year speech of the president, the meaning escaping you completely,
- clink a glass of vodka on the screen persisting in trying to drink brotherhood with the president,
- you can deliver your own speech in response, saying your season’s greetings to fellow-citizens without mincing words, nobody will hear you anyway (which is a pity though).
- throw the bunny mask out of the window yelling “Up yours!..” at the top of your lungs thrice – it will sure drive every evil away from your home,
- start debauching in a lonely way: dance on the table, trample the plastic fir-tree, draw scarlet poppies on the wallpaper using the Russian salad you’ve cooked, and in general behave like Mowgli in spring,
- tearfully watch the New Year show on TV wearing a straight and sober face,
- by 1:00 it’s high time to apply a beauty mask. For this drop face down in the mayonnaise salad. You are still to face a long night, you must look your best,
- bring the large mirror from your bathroom and stand it upright on a chair on the opposite side of the table,
- engage in a constructive dialogue with your reflection; later, when the horror of the situation dawns upon you, have a good cry; feeling frightened and uneasy, try to put the mirror to sleep, rocking it and crooning a bawdy lullaby,
- having finished the third bottle holding it by the neck, you solemnly go to barf in the toilet in the New Year way, but never make it there,
- try to scrub the corridor,
- if you have pets, it’s highly recommended to involve them in festivities. You can sing karaoke with dogs, a cat will make a nice furry decoration for your New Year tree, goldfish may end up as sushi if they misbehave,
- play forfeits with yourself. The loser will go to the shop for more vodka,
- in the shop the one-man show ends. If you continue debauching, you will end up in the local police station (which has some exotic touch in it). If you make friends with salesgirls and the guards, you’ll run clean out of money that you need for taking a hair of the dog that bit you in the morning.

(continued)
Partying With People Little Known to You

To do it properly you:
- if on the rocks, borrow some money from your parents and ride somewhere knowing neither where exactly you are going nor what you are going there for,
- drink everything you are offered in a frenzied way. Otherwise what kind of a New Year is it – 20:00 and you are still disgustingly sober,
- try to learn the names of strangers around you,
- shyly swill champagne, without chasing it down with snacks, and start feeling romantic,
- by midnight you are still trying to pretend you are a decent and a well-mannered person,
- after the New Year speech of the president you clink glasses with the guests reaching across the table, dipping your sweater or jacket in the salads and upsetting jugs and candles,
- help to put out the resulting fire with some juice and cognac,
- by 1:00 you have already drunk brotherhood with 8 bottles of champagne, performed a crazy mix of mambo, Cossack dance, hula-hula, polka, twist, and jitterbug, given a master class in cancan on the table and toppled the New Year tree over in person,
- usually by this time the strangers around you stop being strangers. See the Partying With Old Bosom Friends section below.

(continued)
Partying With Old Bosom Friends
To do it properly you:
- if on the rocks, borrow some money from your parents and ride somewhere knowing only too well where exactly you are going and what you are going there for,
- drink everything you are offered in a frenzied way. Otherwise what kind of a New Year is it – 20:00 and you are still disgustingly sober,
- drink with abandon. Eat nothing, saving the precious space in your stomach for the drinks,
- drink with interest, as the alcohol has already exerted positive influence on your senses and you start liking your regular company of alcoholics, scoundrels, idlers, freaks, j*rks, and all the other unique and admirable people,
- try to remember their names,
- by midnight you are only partly human,
- during the New Year speech of the president you imitate him mockingly, using foul language. Universal laughter indicates your friends’ approval of what you are doing,
- clink glasses with the guests reaching across the table, dipping your sweater or jacket in the salads, waving Bengal lights overhead and upsetting jugs and candles,
- laughing your head off, help to put out the resulting fire with some juice, cognac, and cold chops. It helps a lot,
- by 1:00 you have already drunk brotherhood with 8 bottles of champagne, performed a crazy mix of mambo, Cossack dance, hula-hula, polka, twist, and jitterbug, given a master class in cancan on the table and toppled the New Year tree over in person,
- made love in the bathroom and broken off the sink in the process. In their turn, the rest have almost torn off your ears to express their displeasure about being left without the sink on such a night,
- start playing active games with your friends – usually it’s something like ‘wake up the lady of the house’, ‘open up, you bi*ch, I’m freezing on this balcony’, ‘chase me cognac’, ‘dodge the salad bowl’, ‘find Snegurochka’s* bra’, etc.
- have an hour’s rest under cold shower fully dressed, then with a new surge of energy you go and try to find what to change into,
- in the street you drink champagne chasing it down with vodka, as it’s very bracing,
- when going to sleep in a snowbank, choose the warmest one where some of your acquaintances are already resting,
- The New Year party must go on!

Happy New Year!

* SnegUrochka is the granddaughter and helper of Ded MorOz, the 'Russian Santa'. She is usually a fair maiden with a long blonde plait and blue eyes.

I live in the southern US and we have a tradition for the New Year. We eat black-eyed peas (for good luck), turnip/collard greens (represents dollars), cornbread (represents gold), and some form of pork..be it ham or hog jowls (for health) as a traditional Jan 1st meal.

Also..when we get the first snow of the New Year..it is tradition to run one lap around the outside of your house while naked..it is supposed to keep you from catching a cold during the year..lol.

あけましておめでとうございまãï¼ˆA happy new year)

I live in Japan and we write a New Year's card. About , we have holiday from December 30 to January 3. We go for a trip with a family, or visit the home of parents , spend a holiday. I went to Korea with a family.
And I saw TK's new movie(K-20).I must not forget it.

As for me .....I mean my family there is a tradition to watch "S Legkim Parom" every 31st of December lol (that is a movie about love and New Year made somewhere in 70's)
So I guess I remember even those New Years I was not even born yet lol

Well, speaking about traditions, I believe Russia is very close to other European countries – the same New Year tree decorated (in this country it’s most often a pine-tree, as fir-trees are rather rare, they last a shorter time and shed terribly), the same tradition of seeing the New Year in with the family, the same tradition of going out to have some more fun with the masses of people, the same New Year special dish (in Russia it’s most often a roast goose with apples, though not necessarily), the same tradition of taking children out to some New Year performance, the same New Year shows everywhere. What’s special then?

I guess, the film mentioned by mikomi - Ironiya sudby, ili S legkim parom! (1975) (TV) ... aka The Irony of Fate, or Enjoy Your Bath! (International: English title: informal English title)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073179/ It’s a very nice film, funny, but a bit sad at the same time, psychologically true, very good actors. It’s been torn into dozens of quotes. They filmed a sequel, but it is worse than the original film.

In my city people usually go to the central square (the biggest in Europe) where there is a huge New Year tree, giant figures of Ded Moroz and Snegurochka. If there’s much snow they build there a snow fortress (children explore it early in the morning, later teenagers and grown-ups take it by storm, which is fun), ice-hills (none this year, too little snow), a skating-rink, attractions and carousels, one-horse sledges (troikas are forbidden now, too fast for the square, dangerous for the people who may get run over) and ponies for children to ride, a New Year bazaar where they mostly sell fireworks and fire-crackers. There’s usually an official fireworks show in several districts of the city (the city is biggish, about a million plus something inhabitants), but the people are VERY enthusiastic – starting with the New Year night and till the 7th of January it might seem there are some small-scale military operations or rifle fire exchange going on at night – wzzz! boom! crash! Rat-tat-tat! Crack-crack! KER - BANG!!!! And so till noon. Hundreds of costumed Ded Moroz’s and Snegurochkas go visiting with season’s greetings, they can be professional actors or your friends in disguise.

Many people go to the local slopes to ski. There’s also a crazy tradition among the dedicated hikers to go to the winter forest and to decorate the fir-tree there, spending the New Year night in the open air (usually at about – 16 C) singing and dancing in a ring. I believe everything depends on the company, and the personal sense of humour.

My personal bit of New Year luck.

You know, I seem to be very unlucky about the water element on the New Year night.

A year ago we had a very modest party at home, but one of the guests, a rather big lady, somehow managed to break the water tank in the toilet in two. As a result we were fighting first a nice tall fountain of ice-cold water and then a huge pool of the same water seeping to the neighbours downstairs. When we, wet through and dripping, managed to shut off the water supply, it dawned upon us that either we must have a new tank or we be left without cold water till the end of the holidays. Can you comfortably last for 11 days on boiling-hot technical water? Then we faced the problem of where to find a shop of sanitary engineering gadgets open on the 1t of January. Of all days! When we found one at last, the shop assistant had a puffy face, was not very firm on her feet and looked at us with such hatred that if she could kill with a look, we’d have been done for on the spot. Indeed, what kind of idiots would need the goods she was selling on that particular morning? Only when we humbly said we had been having a party, she woke up and started smiling and moving around. God knows WHAT she pictured to herself. We hauled the new water tank home, and then hauled the broken one out, yelled "Up yours..!" when we let the broken tank fly to join the litter in the container.. and involuntarily scared an old lady passing by whom we just didn't see in time.

Another time we went visiting. The youngest child there stuffed a whole pomegranate into the toilet bowl aqua-stop device with predictable results. The trick is she didn’t tell anyone about her little experiment till things started happening.

About five years ago we were about to begin celebrating, when I went to the kitchen to fetch something and switched on the light. I stopped in my tracks dumbfounded. The whole wall in front of me was strangely moving and shimmering. I blinked. At the second glance I understood it was a regular waterfall cascading down the wall. Frenetic simultaneous mopping and phoning. I sent my husband upstairs to the neighbours to stop the flood. For half an hour he was ringing the bell and banging on the door. The emergency team servicing the house shut off the water supply and the neighbour upstairs opened the door almost simultaneously. What happened? She put her dirty plates in the sink, turned on the taps, and … went to have a nap. Great. When I settled down to mopping more or less at my own pace, all the lights went out suddenly. The emergency electrician decided to cut off the power supply just to be on the safe side. Now I know how to mop in the dark or in candlelight.

This year we were sitting and enjoying the company of one of our friends, when he said: “Something’s dripping somewhere.” It turned out that our 100-litre aquarium in the kitchen decided to develop a nice mighty leak precisely at this particular moment. The rescue mission began. Just imagine my crazy running to and fro with pails, basins and mops, and two gentlemen, unruffled, with their pipes in their teeth, slowly fishing with two tiny landing-nets for the tropical catfish and cichlids (who were not eager to leave the aquarium at all and decided it was something like playing tag), and intoning special fish-catching obscene mantras when they thought I couldn't hear, which helped a lot (I guess the fish get paralyzed with interest while listening to them).

Now I wonder what next? And who can tell me - why?