Authored by John Haughey via The Epoch Times,
Millions worldwide will watch a crystal ball descend 139 feet down a flagpole in Manhattan’s Time Square as a throng of thousands counts down the last 10 seconds of 2025 and ushers in 2026 in a blizzard of confetti and a cacophony of kazoos, party horns, whistles, and whatever else imaginative noisemakers can stash and carry.
The minute-long ball drop is among the planet’s most viewed annual live events.
At least a billion will see the 12.5-foot diameter, 12,350-pound “Constellation Ball“ with 32,000 LEDs and 5,280 Waterford crystals shimmer, shine, and sink.
Only this year, they’ll see the ball rise again in a blaze of red, white, and blue as 2026 dawns to mark the 250th birthday of the United States and instantly kick off a year of commemorative celebrations across the country.
The Times Square New Year ball drop is glitter, glitz, and a tradition since 1907 so when it comes to ball drops, it’s the premier event.
But face it: Anyone can drop a ball.
Ask Jacksonville Jaguars’ quarterback Trevor Lawrence. His receivers have dropped the ball an NFL-leading 45 times in 2025. It’s been done. Over and over.
So ever-innovative Americans have found all sorts of weird and wonderful things to drop when saying farewell to one year and welcoming the next.
On New Year’s Eve, anchors and shoes will drop—a “whiskey boot” in Prescott, Ariz.; flip-flops in Folly Beach, S.C.—and pants will be run up and down flagpoles, including yellow breeches on Yellow Breeches Creek in Lititz, Pa.
Marine life will be honored with sardines, mossbunkers, lobsters, oysters, conch, carp, red crabs, and blue crabs dropping in coastal towns, including Manhattan’s Hell’s Kitchen, where “Cosmic Turtle” is set to rise and fall to the occasion like a true hard-shelled urbanite.
There will be birds of all feathers diving into posterity, most commonly eagles, pelicans, and ducks, but in Perry, Ga., a buzzard will wing in the New Year.
Stuffed beavers, bears, goats, a hamster, and a flying pig will be among cherished critters descending to applause with a live possum the honoree in Tallapoosa, Ga. When it comes to, let’s say the most distinctive New Year drops, Georgia and Pennsylvania top the list.
Vegetables and fruits will be frequent fallers. Oranges, blueberries, pineapples, peaches, watermelons, grapes, cherries, strawberries, acorns, mushrooms, lemons, peanuts, olives, lettuce, potatoes, chili peppers, and applies—including apples with arrows shot through them—will take the plunge. There will be pickle drops but the one in Dillsburg, Pa., soberly conducted since 1907, is the best preserved.
Stars, sunbursts, atoms, meteorites, jugs, race cars, hockey pucks, fishing lures, piñatas, ukuleles, guitars, bricks, beer bottles, cannonballs, ping pong balls, golf balls, beach balls, popcorn balls, crayons, kettles, cigars—there’s controversy in Red Lion, Pa., where a lion will defiantly hoist a cigar, but in a parking lot rather than from the municipal building—horseshoes, and gumbo pots will all mark the passage of time and decorum.
Meatballs, sausage, cheese dogs, pretzels, French fries, potato chips, pierogies with kielbasa, tacos, an 80-pound cheese wedge, giant M&Ms, Hershey’s Kisses, lollipops, ice cream cake, doughnuts, a 600-pound moonpie, and tortilla chips will be on the drop menu and, for the 29th year, so will a 150-pound “stick” of bologna in Lebanon, Pa.
Pac-Man, pirates, drag queens—in Key West, pirate drag queens—Las Vegas skydivers in lighted suits, and a Kansas City comedian will be among those who drop as the last seconds of 2025 tick away, as will Jasper The Flea, Lucky The Dead Carp (kiss it for good luck!), Captain Wylie Walleye, Spencer The Stuffed Opossum, Chuck The Chicken, Bob The Shrimp, and Marshall P. Muskrat in top hat and bow tie.
Below are 12 arbitrarily selected towns with distinctive styles in counting down the final fleeting moments of a year.
The 6-foot Bayer aspirin tablet drop Myerstown, Pa., would be included but confirming if that’s happening this year is too much of a headache, and if others are overlooked, someone in marketing dropped the ball.
In Guam, where “America’s Day Begins” 15 hours before the day begins in Times Square, it’s good luck to wear polka dots on New Year’s Eve, and on Cadillac Mountain in Maine, the first place to see a winter sunrise in the continental United States, anyone who sees a snowy owl on New Year’s Eve is destined to have a fortuitous year.
But luck has nothing to do with these local New Year’s drop rituals that drop-kick convention, some for don’t ask, don’t tell reasons lost to antiquity.
— Eastport, Maine: There are two New Year’s Eve drops in the easternmost town in the continental United States as part of The Great Sardine & Maple Leaf Drop. At 11 p.m., an illuminated maple leaf descends to honor neighboring towns across the border in Canada’s Atlantic Time Zone and an hour later, down comes a six-foot sardine that onlookers swarm to kiss for good luck. If smooching a sardine doesn’t appeal, there’s always the DownEast Lobstah Drop an hour away in Machias.
— Key West, Florida: A six-foot queen conch shell will drop 20 feet onto the bar at Sloppy Joe’s during the Key West Conch Drop but whether celebrants notice is always uncertain with all sorts of things dropping elsewhere on Duval Street. There will be plenty of citrus-themed drops across the Sunshine State and kids can pick a brick to drop at Legoland in Winter Haven.
— Unadilla, Georgia: A pig-shaped sign will be lowered in awestruck reverence during the ninth annual “Hog Drop” that includes a BBQ competition, Monster Truck show, dirt bike stunts, fire breathers, racing pigs, chainsaw sculptors, and axe-throwers.
Sure, Atlanta is dropping a big peach, Brunswick has “Bob The Shrimp,” Cornelia the “Little Red Apple,” and Perry has its buzzard, but watching the hog drop in Unadilla is, like, seeing what Georgia is all about.
— Vincennes, Indiana. An 18-foot, 500-pound steel-and-foam watermelon descends 100 feet during the last 60 seconds of the year before hitting the ground and spilling forth a bounty of locally grown watermelon. This isn’t merely some quirky local oddity, this is the National Watermelon Drop—the Super Bowl, World Cup, Nobel Prize of watermelon drops.
— Frederick, Maryland: The 78th annual “Key Drop” on Carroll Creek will commemorate Francis Scott Key, the hometown lawyer who wrote the poem “Defense of Fort McHenry“ that became the United States’ national anthem., ”The Star-Spangled Banner.”
Less than 30 miles away, a giant doughnut will be dunked in Hagerstown to honor Krumpe’s Do-Nuts, a family-owned bakery in business since 1934, because—why not?
— Detroit: The ninth annual “D Burst” will drop at Campus Martius Park to commemorate the Motor City’s renaissance and serve as the finale of a series of celebrations that began with a Christmas tree lighting ceremony on Thanksgiving.
Meanwhile, in Naguanee, on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, the annual New Year’s Midnight Meatball Drop at Strega Nonna, will likely draw many of the town’s 4,600 residents to enjoy a 50-pound meatball that drops into a massive pot of tomato sauce.
— St. Paul, Minnesota: The Midway Saloon will again orchestrate the New Year’s “Minnesota Bobber Drop” that features the descent of the unchallenged, no doubt, Guinness World Records-certified largest functioning fishing bobber—a seven-foot diameter red-and-white float “big enough to make Paul Bunyan proud.”
— Allentown, Pennsylvania: Downtown Allentown isn’t just dropping hockey pucks, it annually stages “The World’s Largest Puck Drop” on New Year’s Eve, just one of many distinctive celebrations across the Keystone State.
Among notable drops: Mabel The Cow from a silo in Blain; Haydn’s Jug in East Petersburg; a wrench in Mechanicsburg; and “chunks of coal” in several towns.
— Oak Ridge, Tennessee: Celebrate the end of 2025, which marked the 80th anniversary of atomic weaponry that somehow, thus far, hasn’t ended life on Earth, at the “Secret City New Year’s Eve Atomic Ball Drop” in the national lab city where it all began.
— Mobile, Alabama: A Mardi Gras-style parade ends with the descent of a 600-pound MoonPie from RSA Tower in Mobile’s 17th annual “MoonPie Over Mobile“ New Year’s Eve party.
For something more down to earth in ‘Bama, there’s always the Wetumpka Crater “Meteor Drop” and Samson’s “Snuff Drop,” which commemorates “an incident where a train containing a shipment of Rooster-brand snuff [tobacco] was parked at the town’s depot for an extended period of time.” Got to be there to learn the details of this “incident.”
— Plymouth, Wisconsin: Home of “The Big Cheese Drop,” where an 80-pound decorated cheese wedge is dangled and dropped 100 feet from a firetruck ladder.
— Show Low, Arizona: The annual “Show Low Deuce of Clubs Drop” will draw locals and tourists to see a giant playing card lowered from the town’s library to commemorate “the infamous card game that started the town.”
Elsewhere in Arizona, iceberg lettuce will be dropped in Yuma and a pinecone in Flagstaff, and a boot in Prescott.
