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Celebrate New Year’s Eve with these fun New Year’s Eve traditions to make it fun for the entire family! Includes kid-friendly ideas.
NEW YEAR’S EVE TRADITIONS FOR THE ENTIRE FAMILY
Are you wondering how to celebrate New Year’s Eve? Here’s tons of fun New Year’s Eve traditions for families, games, food ideas, and activity ideas. So you want to make New Year’s Eve fun for your entire family? You’re in luck!
Celebrating New Years Eve was always a family affair growing up. If you’d like to start some of your own meaningful family New Year’s Eve traditions, this post is for you! As always, no pressure to do them all. Just pick your favorites for a fun New Year’s Eve together!
NEW YEAR’S EVE TRADITIONS- ACTIVITIES
1. WATCH FAMILY VIDEOS FROM THE YEAR
Chances are you have probably taken a million family videos from the year. Compile them before New Year’s Eve and take some time to watch them.
We love watching all our family videos from the year and even year’s past. It will be so fun to see how everyone has grown and it’s a great way to look back on your year.
2. TAKE A FAMILY NEW YEAR’S EVE PICTURE
Taking a New Year’s family photo is one of our favorite traditions! In fact, my family usually gets really into it and we all wear black and silver or gold for our New Year’s Eve party.
FAMILY NEW YEAR PHOTO IDEAS:
- Hang up a black sheet or tablecloth for your backdrop
- Create a simple New Year’s Banner or you can purchase one such as this one
- Grab or make some fun props such as hats and glasses
And some of NYE photos from years past:
3. NEW YEAR’S GOALS
New Year’s traditions must includes making goals, right?
Make a family goals binder with these printable goal sheets right here. We keep a Family Goals binder where we update our goals and reminisce on the last year’s goals. If we’re really good, we pull them out monthly or at least a few times in the year to check our progress.
4. LET KIDS STAY UP LATE
New Year’s Eve was the only night of the year that us children got to stay up as late as we wanted. Some of you may be cringing at this idea, so I’m not saying it’s a must. But… usually there are very little commitments on New Year’s Days, so we were always able to sleep in after a long (or short) night.
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Staying up as late as we wanted was an absolute treat! There was no bedtime to fight and since our celebrations involved the family, we weren’t intruding on any of the festivities.
Tip: If you don’t want your children staying up until midnight, do a faux midnight countdown. That way they still get to have the fun of the clock striking 12 in their mind.
5. BANG POTS & PANS AT MIDNIGHT
Want to know how to ring in the New Year with a bang?
Try running up and down the streets at midnight with pots and pans in hand. There’s no need for fancy noisemakers when you can pull out pots and wooden spoons from the kitchen. (We always had some extra wooden spoons on hand so we wouldn’t break the nice ones!)
To this day and no matter how old we get, we still run outside at midnight and bang pots and pans and scream, “Happy New Year!” Children and adults love this fun new years traditions.
Tip: Buy wooden spoons from the dollar store that you don’t care about!
NEW YEAR’S EVE TRADITIONS- GAMES
1. NEW YEAR’S EVE COUNTDOWN BAGS
What to do new year’s eve? Celebrate New Year’s Eve with fun countdown bags for each hour. Make New Year’s Eve extra fun for littles by having a special treat, snack, or game for them to open on each hour. We did this a few years ago and the kids loved it! And seriously, the time passed by so quickly.
Get the free printables and more details about the New Years Eve Countdown Bags here.
2. WHITE ELEPHANT GIFT AUCTION
A fun New Year’s Eve game is a gift auction. Get the details here
3. DOLLAR BILL GAME FOR NEW YEARS
Attach a $1 bill to everyone’s shirt using a safety pin or paper clip. Designate one word that cannot be said throughout your New Year’s Eve party. If anyone says this word, the person who hears that word gets to take the dollar and attach it to their shirt. Whatever money you have left at the end of the night is what you get to keep!
For example, if you designate the word to be “water”, if anyone hears someone say “water” they get to take the money from that person and keep it.
4. M&M GAME OR SKITTLE GAME
Place a bag of M&Ms or Skittles in a bowl. Have everyone sit in a circle. Give everyone a straw. Start a timer for 15 seconds (or feel free to adjust the time!) The first person uses their straw to pick up as many candies as they can in that time. Once they have sucked up a candy, they place it in a pile next to them. (You can give everyone a paper plate or bowl for this.) When the time is up, the bowl of candy goes to the next person.
Repeat until everyone has had a few turns, or until the candy runs out. The player with the most pieces of candy at the end wins.
5. FAVORITE FAMILY BOARD GAMES
Another favorite New Year’s Eve tradition is to pull out all your favorite family games! Grab all the new family games you got for Christmas since New Years is a good time to play them all.
Here’s a post with all of our favorite family games for New Year’s Eve!
6. DICE GAME FOR GIFT EXCHANGE
Another super fun New Year’s Eve game is the dice game for gift exchange! Everyone brings a gift or two. Roll the dice to find out what you do with your gift! Get all the details here.
7. MINUTE TO WIN IT GAMES
And of course, don’t forget that Minute to win it games will are great New Years party game! Here’s 21 Top Minute To Win It Games for New Years.
NYE TRADITIONS- FOOD
1. NEW YEAR’S EVE APPETIZERS
Don’t forget the New Year’s appetizers! Here’s a post with all out favorite New Year’s finger food ideas including our favorite easy chocolate fondue recipe.
2. DO A NEW YEAR’S EVE TOAST
Another fun New Year’s Eve tradition is doing a toast! Grab some non-alcoholic sparkling drinks, such as Martinellis. Or whip up some fun Italian sodas.
NEW YEAR’S EVE TRADITIONS- PARTY IDEAS
NEW YEAR’S GIFT IDEAS FOR FAMILY
If you didn’t have a chance to deliver neighbor Christmas gifts, give a New Year’s gift instead! Here are some fun gift ideas to help people celebrate the New Year!
Some years we choose to simplify Christmas by giving New Year’s gifts to our neighbors instead of Christmas gifts. We love doing this for a few reasons:
- It simplifies Christmas
- We can deliver New Year’s gifts when the season has slowed down
- It’s fun to give treats or other NYE party supplies
- Most people’s Christmas goodies are gone, so they aren’t sick of getting more treats. This way, they are more spread out.
1. POPCORN GIFT FOR NEW YEARS
Cute New Year’s Eve idea is this “Just poppin’ by to wish you a Happy New Year!” Attach the tags to a box of popcorn or soda pop.
2. MERRY CHRISTMAS & A HAPPY ROOT BEER
Everyone loves root beer, right? Give a gift they can use on New Year’s Eve!
3. COOKIE DOUGH GIFT
A clever and funny neighbor gift is some extra dough aka cookie dough!
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