New Year Poll – Results

Our recent New Year Poll has ended, and yields some interesting results in terms of our community’s preferences for this time of the year. Here is a brief analysis of your responses.

Where did respondents spend New Year?

• 44% travelled to a foreign country
• 37% were at home
• 10% travelled within their country

Who did respondents spend New Year with?

• 39% spent it with their closest family
• 29% spent it with family and friends
• 14% (surpisingly high perhaps…) spent it alone
• 6% spent it with strangers…

We asked to decide whether they prefer to travel or to be at home, the surprise is not that more answered travel (57%), but that a rather high 43% decidedly prefers to be at home for New Year.

Most respondents (31%) plan their New Year activities a few months before. 

27% are more laissez-faire and allow things to happen to them without planning, while another 23% go for spontaneous, last-minute plans. This would suggest that at least half of the respondents don’t pre-plan their New Year much. Less than 4% plan their New Year a year in advance.

This correlates with the 59% who have no idea at present where they will be for the next New Year. A quarter of respondents have a vague idea and only around 17% seem pretty sure of their plans, 11 months down the road.

In terms of ‘traditions’ for New Year that people seem to enjoy, the following received multiple mentions:

• Fireworks
• Good food (mentioned in addition to specific food-related items, such as ’12 grapes’, Shuba salad, raclette, sausages etc.)
• The New Year concert (especially the one in Vienna)
• Making snowmen
• Games (playing cards/bingo etc.)

Here are some interesting notes from people when asked what their most memorable New Year was:

• Probably last year, when the Danish queen abdicated live on television while I was the technical director. No-one knew – it was a complete surprise.
• 2016/2017, Karima Sudan, very dry sylvester party without alcohol with other members of the travel group, a Sudanese band has played traditional musik for one our early in the evening. Start into the new year with mineral water.
• My first significant solo trip abroad was to New Zealand when I was 17. I was in a hostel in Wellington with a friend at New Year’s Eve. We anticipated a ‘sunny’ New Year at the beach in our shorts, so we could make everyone at home jealous with our pictures. Turned out it was only 12 degrees Celsius that day and all celebrations were cancelled due to heavy winds. We sipped some champagne on the beach, freezing our asses off and went back to the hostel within 10 minutes.
• Uganda in a lodge in the bwindi impenetrable park to see gorillas (a different species between mountain and lowland according to some scientist). I was for the first time alone without fireworks and particular celebration, but I enjoyed the wild silence of my hut.
• In Benghazi I met local boyscouts and spent the New Year with them, singing boyscout songs in Arabic by the campfire.
• December 31, 2008 – the NYE that I met my husband in a ballroom at the Banff Springs Hotel!
• In Iran (nothing happened)
• 2018 -> 2019 which is when we decided to have our first child

About a third of respondents have spent New Year in a country where there was no ‘New Year feel’.

Here are some responses:

• We’ve been to Morocco and spent NYE in Rabat where it was absolutely dark and nobody cared
• Iran was the biggest surprise on January 1st as for them the New Year of Nowruz is on March 21. There was absolutely zero going on and even though I was surrounded by educated locals who had international exposure, they found it very strange that I was suggesting something important and celebration-worthy was going on.
• Chongqing 2018. On the north banks of the Jialing River, I didn’t even notice it was the new year until 18 minutes later because there were no fireworks or celebrations
• In Ethiopia they use a different calendar, hence no celebration in January, but in September.
• I was working in Oman and January 1st was a normal working day with students taking exams, so I was invigilating. There was no hint of anything important having happened.