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During this last year I've improved myself by getting back into art, music, school, and my relationships with other people.

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This year I've learned that death is natural and can't be avoided, and everything happens for a reason. Earlier last year, my dog had been murdered and my cousins mother had died in the hospital, due to blood clots.

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The song named " New Year's Resolution" by Otis Redding and Carla Thomas.
In the Lyrics it talks about how they want to make promises to each other and finish what they had started. "And baby let's make promises that we can keep and call it a New Year's resolution, hmm"
It also talks about how they've their ups and downs, and times they've needed each other. "Many times we had our ups and downs and times you needed me I couldn't be found."

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Otis Redding and The Pinetoppers - Topic

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New Year's Foods that are                       eaten for good luck

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New Year's Foods that are                       eaten for good luck

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1) Pork
So naturally, pork, with its rich, delicious fattiness has come to symbolize wealth and prosperity.

2) Lentils
Italians eat lentils on New Year's for wealth and prosperity because the flat legumes were believed to resemble Roman coins.

3) Greens
Leafy greens resemble folded paper money symbolizing wealth and prosperity. Pair them with black–eyed peas and ham for a truly Southern New Year's tradition and triple your luck for the year.

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1) Hoppin' John, American South
A major New Year's food tradition in the American South, Hoppin' John is a dish of pork-flavored field peas or black-eyed peas

2) Tamales, Mexico
Tamales, corn dough stuffed with meat, cheese and wrapped in a banana leaf or a corn husk, make appearances at almost every special occasion in Mexico.

3) Oliebollen, Netherlands
In the Netherlands, fried oil balls, or oliebollen, are sold by street carts and are traditionally eaten on New Year's Eve and at special celebratory fairs

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A Bahamian festival takes place on both Boxing Day and New Year's Day. Thought to have started in the late 18th century, when slaves were allowed to leave plantations to celebrate Christmas as a community. Groups of dancers hit the streets, while musicians beat ghostskin drums and cow whistles.

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New Year's Eve tradition in Japan is celebrated by ringing bells in Buddhist temples.  Ringing a bell 108 times causes suffering, according the Buddhist tradition is thought to dispel negative emotions and mentalities.

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A New Year's Tradition in Spain is eating  12 grapes, one for each stroke of midnight, and if you're successful tradition says you'll have a year of prosperity.  The place this tradition is performed is in the Puerta de Sol is Madrid for New Year's Eve.

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  New Year's Traditions in Other Countries

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  New Year's Traditions in Other Countries

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New Year's has been recorded since 45 B.C., New Year's is celebrated on January 1.  Celebration of New Year's Day ceased in the Middle Ages.  In 1582, the Gregorian Calendar was implemented, and since then people around the world have gathered together to celebrate New Year's.
Read in Greater Detail about New Years

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In 45 B.C., New Year's Day is celebrated on January 1 for the first time in history as the Julian calendar takes effect.

Soon after becoming Roman dictator, Julius Caesar decided that the traditional Roman calendar was in dire need of reform. Introduced around the seventh century B.C., the Roman calendar attempted to follow the lunar cycle but frequently fell out of phase with the seasons and had to be corrected. In addition, the pontifices, the Roman body charged with overseeing the calendar, often abused its authority by adding days to extend political terms or interfere with elections.

In designing his new calendar, Caesar enlisted the aid of Sosigenes, an Alexandrian astronomer, who advised him to do away with the lunar cycle entirely and follow the solar year, as did the Egyptians. The year was calculated to be 365 and 1/4 days, and Caesar added 67 days to 46 B.C., making 45 B.C. begin on January 1, rather than in March. He also decreed that every four years a day be added to February, thus theoretically keeping his calendar from falling out of step. Shortly after Caesar was assassinated in 44 B.C., Mark Anthony changed the name of the month Quintilis to Julius (July) to honor him. Later, the month of Sextilis was renamed Augustus (August) after his successor.

Celebration of New Year's Day in January fell out of practice during the Middle Ages, and even those who strictly adhered to the Julian calendar did not observe the New Year exactly on January 1. The reason for the latter was that Caesar and Sosigenes failed to calculate the correct value for the solar year as 365.242199 days, not 365.25 days. Thus, an 11-minute-a-year error added seven days by the year 1000, and 10 days by the mid-15th century.

The Church became aware of this problem, and in the 1570s Pope Gregory XIII commissioned Jesuit astronomer Christopher Clavius to come up with a new calendar. In 1582, the Gregorian calendar was implemented, omitting 10 days for that year and establishing the new rule that only one of every four centennial years should be a leap year. Since then, people around the world have gathered en masse on January 1 to celebrate the precise arrival of the New Year.
READ MORE: 5 Ancient New Year's Celebrations

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The Julian calendar takes effect for the first time on New Year's Day

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In 45 B.C., New Year's Day is celebrated on January 1 for the first time in history as the Julian calendar takes effect. Soon after becoming Roman dictator, Julius Caesar decided that the traditional Roman calendar was in dire need of reform.

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The Finale show on New Year's Eve is the traditional drop of a Waterford Crystal ball from 1 Time Square.
Learn more facts about the New Year's Eve Ball

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Revelers began celebrating New Year's Eve in Times Square as early as 1904, but it was in 1907 that the New Year's Eve Ball made its maiden descent from the flagpole atop One Times Square. Seven versions of the Ball have been designed to signal the New Year.

The first New Year's Eve Ball, made of iron and wood and adorned with one hundred 25-watt light bulbs, was 5 feet in diameter and weighed 700 pounds. It was built by a young immigrant metalworker named Jacob Starr, and for most of the twentieth century the company he founded, sign maker Artkraft Strauss, was responsible for lowering the Ball.

As part of the 1907-1908 festivities, waiters in the fabled "lobster palaces" and other deluxe eateries in hotels surrounding Times Square were supplied with battery-powered top hats emblazoned with the numbers "1908" fashioned of tiny light bulbs. At the stroke of midnight, they all "flipped their lids" and the year on their foreheads lit up in conjunction with the numbers "1908" on the parapet of the Times Tower lighting up to signal the arrival of the new year.

The Ball has been lowered every year since 1907, with the exceptions of 1942 and 1943, when the ceremony was suspended due to the wartime "dimout" of lights in New York City. Nevertheless, the crowds still gathered in Times Square in those years and greeted the New Year with a minute of silence followed by the ringing of chimes from sound trucks parked at the base of the tower-a harkening-back to the earlier celebrations at Trinity Church, where crowds would gather to "ring out the old, ring in the new."

In 1920, a 400 pound Ball made entirely of wrought iron replaced the original. In 1955, the iron Ball was replaced with an aluminum Ball weighing a mere 150 pounds. This aluminum Ball remained unchanged until the 1980s, when red light bulbs and the addition of a green stem converted the Ball into an apple for the "I Love New York" marketing campaign from 1981 until 1988. After seven years, the traditional glowing white Ball with white light bulbs and without the green stem returned to brightly light the sky above Times Square. In 1995, the Ball was upgraded with aluminum skin, rhinestones, strobes, and computer controls, but the aluminum Ball was lowered for the last time in 1998.

For Times Square 2000, the millennium celebration at the Crossroads of the World, the New Year's Eve Ball was completely redesigned by Waterford Crystal and Philips Lighting. The crystal Ball combined the latest in lighting technology with the most traditional of materials, reminding us of our past as we gazed into the future and the beginning of a new millennium.

In 2007, for the 100th anniversary of the Times Square Ball Drop tradition, Waterford Crystal and Philips Lighting crafted a spectacular new LED crystal Ball. The incandescent and halogen bulbs of the past century were replaced by state-of-the-art Philips Luxeon LED lighting technology that dramatically increased the brightness and color capabilities of the Ball.

The beauty and energy efficiency of the Centennial Ball inspired the building owners of One Times Square to build the permanent Big Ball weighing nearly six tons and twelve feet in diameter. The 2,688 Waterford Crystal triangles are illuminated by 32,256 Philips Luxeon LEDs. This Big Times Square New Year's Eve Ball is now a year-round attraction sparkling above Times Square in full public view January through December.

About "Time-Balls"

The actual notion of a ball "dropping" to signal the passage of time dates back long before New Year's Eve was ever celebrated in Times Square. The first "time-ball" was installed atop England's Royal Observatory at Greenwich in 1833. This ball would drop at one o'clock every afternoon, allowing the captains of nearby ships to precisely set their chronometers (a vital navigational instrument).

Around 150 public time-balls are believed to have been installed around the world after the success at Greenwich, though few survive and still work. The tradition is carried on today in places like the United States Naval Observatory in Washington, DC, where a time-ball descends from a flagpole at noon each day - and of course, once a year in Times Square, where it marks the stroke of midnight not for a few ships' captains, but for over one billion people watching worldwide.

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The official website of the Times Square New Year's Eve Ball. Live streaming of the Times Square Ball and Times Square New Year's Eve Celebration.

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Revelers began celebrating New Year's Eve in Times Square as early as 1904, but it was in 1907 that the New Year's Eve Ball made its maiden descent from the flagpole atop One Times Square. Seven versions of the Ball have been designed to signal the New Year.

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New Year's and New Year's Eve US History

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New Year's and New Year's Eve US History

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The History of New Year's in the United States 

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The History of New Year's in the United States 

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New Year's Day marks the start of a new year according to the Gregorian Calendar.  According to the Gregorian Calendar, the first day of the year is January 1.  The Gregorian Calendar was introduced in 1582 by Pope Gregory XII.   The Julian calendar that had been in use and was slightly inaccurate, causing the vernal equinox to move backwards in the calendar year.  It marks the end of New Year's Eve celebrations in the United States and gives Americans the chance to look back on the previous year.