Resolutions, champagne, a ball dropping in Times Square and football games have become almost synonymous with New Year’s celebrations. Several Centre County residents share their recollections here about what makes New Year’s Eve and the first day of the coming year memorable for them.
“My parents were partiers!” says Mary Prendergast, “They didn’t do a lot of drinking, but they always had about 25 people over.”
The Bellefonte resident describes how the evening would play out.
“They had progressive dinners, where each course would be served at a different home,” she says, “and it got cold, but that never stopped them.”
The next day, everyone would head to her father’s hunting camp in Slim Gut for, of course, pork and sauerkraut.
“[The camp] didn’t have heat,” Prendergast says, “and we had to heat with a wood stove.”
The seasonal chill also didn’t deter Steph Morey, her husband, Marc, and their son, Cole, and his friends.
When Cole was younger, First Night State College was a big part of their celebration, Steph Morey recalls. “We would get a room at the Ramada in State College, and we’d go downtown to see the ice sculptures.”
The boys would play on the ice slide at Sidney Friedman Park and check out the dozens of other ice sculptures throughout the town during First Night. After viewing the ice sculptures, having hot chocolate and warm cider and strolling through the streets, the crew would head back to the Ramada.
“We’d go swimming and finish the evening with pizza,” she says. “First Night was always such a nice thing to do with the kids.”
State College resident Vicki Wedler and her husband, Joe Herrle, love music and dancing.
“It seems like New Year’s revolved around dancing and finding pork and sauerkraut,” she says.
The couple have enjoyed music and dancing at places like the Nittany Lion Inn, the American Ale House and, on an out-of-town excursion, the Syncopation Dance Club at the Alert Fire Hall in Emigsville. That year, the traditional dinner took place at the Round the Clock Diner in York.
Wedler recalls one noteworthy holiday spent with a friend overseeing the Penn State campus computer system.
“It was 1999 turning to 2000,” she says, “and everyone was talking about Y2K. It was quite a big deal, and things could have gone wrong.” The entire world had worried that computers programmed with just two digits for the year would crash when those digits switched from “99” to “00,” but those fears turned out to be unfounded.
Some years have found Wedler and Herrle in downtown State College because, as Wedler says, “there’s always something going on like the ice sculptures or different kinds of music.”
On the other end of town, Karyn Morrison, manager of Northland Bowl, maintains an event that first took place 15 years ago.
The New Year’s Eve Family Party features pizza, party favors and “Cosmic Bowling.”
“We turn off the regular lights and turn on black lights and lasers,” Morrison says. “We call it Rock and Bowl.”
The party goes beyond bowling. “We try to pick bands that appeal to most people. They set up in The Arena Bar and Grill right next to us. We’ve had the Screaming Ducks, Emily’s Toybox and Candlelight Red.”
The staff will close down the bowling alley at 4 p.m. in order to set up for the New Year’s Eve festivities. Decorations feature balloons sculpted with the number of the incoming year, more balloons, banners and as much glitter and sparkle as any celebration needs.
“Families get to bowl, eat pizza, drink soda and have so much fun,” Morrison says, “and we have families who have been coming here for this for years. It’s become a tradition for a lot of local folks.”
She cautions that tickets sell out quickly once they go on sale, at midnight the day after Thanksgiving.
The family fun concludes at 9 p.m., and at 10 p.m. the adult merrymaking begins. This also includes pizza, soda and party favors, in addition to a champagne toast at midnight.
“We also have a confetti cannon,” Morrison adds, “and our cleaning lady has to deal with that the next day!
“It’s also the only time the staff gets to dress up. They get to wear all their sparkle and glitter.”
Northland offers Special Olympics guests lanes to themselves during the later party.
“It’s such a good thing for the community,” she remarks.
Morrison also points out that the New Year’s Eve guests always behave courteously to the staff.
“They understand that they have a good time because someone else had to sacrifice their evening,” she says.
Since the Arena Bar and Grill, Northland Bowl and Northland Motel are all one business, Morrison calls the venue “one stop for fun,” with no need to drive home.
The turning of the year brings our attention to the passage of time. And one State College artist recalls events from 30 years ago, when State College initiated its First Night celebration.
In 1993, Ann Van Kuren, artistic director of the Pennsylvania Dance Theatre, accepted the opportunity for the company to perform at the fledgling event.
“I connected with Jan Kinney. She’s a master storyteller from Altoona,” Van Kuren recalls.
Dank’s department store still occupied the corner of Allen Street and Beaver Avenue where Panera now sits, and the dancers performed in the large window at the building’s front. Kinney stood out front telling the tale.
“It was a traditional Celtic legend about dancing with the devil,” Van Kuren says. “It was about a fiddler, and the more he played, the more they danced. It’s really a prophetic moral story.”
After Dank’s closed, Pennsylvania Dance Theatre’s First Night work began to explore movement and dance in other buildings in the town.
Van Kuren describes one particularly inventive piece where dancers performed in the Fraser Street Garage, using brightly colored lights.
“The dancers were in the stairwells,” she explains, “and when they got to a landing, the audience could see them through the windows. The music was outside, and we could call out the counts and let each other know where we were because you couldn’t hear us from outside.”
For another piece, Van Kuren used a large U-Haul truck with the back opened.
“The dancers were in the truck,” she says, “stomping on the floor and using rhythm they made themselves. We used elements to fit in with the idea of bringing a path forward into the new year.”
Whether it creates a mood or provides a beat for music, rhythm plays a role in more than one New Year’s tradition.
Pleasant Gap resident Jennifer Bittner and her husband, Chris, march in the First Night State College grand procession that files through downtown on New Year’s Eve.
“We play African drums, in an African rhythm,” she says.
The two first started marching in the parade in 2002.
“We always drummed on the wall downtown in front of Old Main,” she recalls, “and we were invited to march in the parade, along with the puppets, mainly leading the parade.”
Bittner finds drumming soothing and healing, and considers it particularly appropriate for New Year’s.
“Drumming can change energy,” she explains. “It can take negativity and make it positive.”
As the old year becomes smaller in the rearview mirror, Bellefonte resident Renea Nichols Nash says she literally sweeps it away and prepares herself for the upcoming year.
“It’s an African American tradition to go into the new year with money in your pocket,” she says, “and you always clean your house, pay all your bills, and that way, you’re ready.”
Nichols Nash also recalls that, while growing up, her family would attend church services on New Year’s Eve. She calls it “Watch Night.”
“We would go to church, and at 11:30, everyone would kneel until the new year started.”
The tradition strengthens faith and community.
“And you have to have black-eyed peas,” she says, laughing.
Black-eyed peas, pork and sauerkraut and other traditions intended for luck and fortune in the coming year abound on New Year’s. Some people eat traditional foods. Some light fireworks. Some kiss at midnight. Some use noisemakers.
Others have quieter rituals, like Stormstown resident Jennifer Chesworth.
“Instead of resolutions,” she says, “I write down things I want to let go of on a piece of paper, then burn the paper on January 1.”
Chesworth says she finds the activity “liberating,” clearing the path for more positive energy.
“And no one keeps resolutions anyway,” she says. “This encourages me to let things happen.”
One Boalsburg resident, Terri Angeletti, says that she and her friends pick a “medicine card” from a special deck for the new year.
“It’s a deck of cards, and each one has an animal on it,” she explains.
After each person shuffles the deck, they each pick a card.
“And that’s sort of your guide for your year,” she says, “and it has a book that tells you what each animal means.”
At the beginning of this year, Angeletti pulled the dolphin card. According to the accompanying book, mana, or life force, strongly associates with the dolphin. A member of Spring Hill Paranormal Researchers, Angeletti feels she picked a good card.
“The life force is important to anything having to do with the spirit world,” she says.
Soon we will open a new day book or calendar or journal to a new page in a new year … and hope for all good things in the coming 365 days. T&G
Anne Dyer Walker is a Bellefonte freelance writer.
