Here’s a few things you might want to do with friends and family to celebrate the changing of the year

Virtual salubong with family from all over the world

Host a countdown party over a video call with loved ones working abroad. Include games, karaoke, and a toast of drinks local to your home country (tuba, anyone?) to make them feel like they’re in the same room. Or how about you upgrade your celebration by preparing food and drinks representing the countries where family members live, or celebrating the New Year for an entire day as it strikes in each time zone they’re at? 

Take extra effort to create a Pinoy food fiesta

Don’t order the usual Chinese feast. If it’s a potluck family party, ask everyone to flex their regional delicacies: Cebu lechon, Bicol Express, Ilocos empanada, moron from Leyte, pastil from Cotabato—imagine the feast you’re greeting the new year with!

Let go

Provide biodegradable lanterns where you can write down something you want to leave behind in the past year. Release them at midnight to symbolize starting fresh. Celebrating by the beach? Write down one thing you want to let go in a banana leaf and set these leaves adrift toward the sea. Or, you can write your resolutions, hopes, and wishes on a lantern or biodegradable balloon and release them into the air to symbolize sending your prayer to the heavens.

Have a fiesta-inspired countdown

It’s a good way to orient kids about your culture. From Cebu? Host a mini Sinulog festival with music, dance, and decorations to bring the energy of your province to your New Year’s celebration. Use tribal drums! From Aklan? Make the celebration Ati-Atihan inspired. From Leyte? Hala bira like the Pintados. 

Nothing more Pinoy than a karaoke countdown challenge 

Starting at 10 p.m., cue songs that would be included in the countdown playlist, capping it off with a banger that’s considered a family theme song. Highest score wins the big prize of the night.

Make kindness a tradition

Start and end the year by giving back and showing kindness. Organize a family activity on the last day and the first day where you bring donations to those in need, or distribute food packs to those who are living on the streets. Counting your stack of donated items can be your version of an NYE countdown.

Create a capsule

Encourage family members to write a letter to their future self, or to their loved ones, and seal these in a box to be opened in the future, on another New Year’s Eve many years from now. Include photos, Polaroids, gifts, or objects.

Street party with the neighbors

Involve the community and create a countdown with local performances, from kids to neighborhood Maritesses. Organize a potluck featuring each household’s specialties.

Let everything Glow in the Dark

Have you ever had a blacklight party? Now’s the time. Make sure everything glows—outfits, decor, and drinks. Stock on glow sticks, neon paint, and luminescent decorations. Use glow-in-the-dark numbers to count down to the New Year.

Stargazing 

Just want to run away from the noise of it all? Celebrate somewhere quiet, like Tanay or Tagaytay, somewhere quiet and with a high elevation, and with zero light pollution. Bring telescopes, blankets, and hot drinks for a celestial countdown under the stars.

Champagne tower

Build a champagne (or if you can’t do alcohol—sparkling juice) tower and pour the final bottle as the clock strikes midnight. Let the oldest member of the family take the top glasses for a symbolic toast.