Before we get to the point where we tip one to the old year and a couple to the New Year, we should take care of a little business.
Guests may cheer out the old year and celebrate the New Year with panoramic views of Tokyo Bay and the fireworks by Tokyo Disneyland.
Other persons more festively inclined saw the old year's passing by assembling in Victoria Square and listening to the strains of the band of Sedgwick's Menagerie playing Auld Lang Syne.
That, at least, is better than contemplating what the old year brought.
We stayed home and celebrated in our own fashion, raising our glasses at midnight not just to toast the old year and welcome the new, but to wish for good health and happiness for ourselves and friends all round the world.
January 1st can never be just another day; it is a fresh beginning; we are given a new start and feel that, whatever we may have failed to achieve in the old year, all things are possible in the new.
But in this part of the world Christmas marks the end of the work year, the end of the academic year and the end of the old year.
As midnight approached, the streets of York filled and an estimated 6,000 people gathered at York Minster to watch and wait for the old year to give way to the new.
At midnight tonight is the day that the new year dawns and the old year dies.
The toll of the New Year's bell signifies the end of the old year and the beginning of the new.
Although the two sides wound up the old year in contrasting fashion, it came as little surprise to those who braved the New Year wind and rain that the game was closely contested.
The Parachute Regiment staff planners believe they had the answer in the last weeks of the old year - a solution which in fact produced a massacre.
After that it's just a matter of hoping for a blue-sky day when I can blow away the cobwebs of the old year, and look ahead to fresh horizons in the new.
This time as midnight struck, I was having a bath - symbolically washing off the old year and planning to return home.
Nevertheless, for many of us, the New Year remains a time to take stock; to assess what happened in the old year and think about our hopes for the new.
He didn't want this to end, didn't want the new year to begin, didn't want to leave the old year behind…
So really, the old year has ended remarkably well.
Down here on the ground, we have lived the last part of the old year in the dark shadow of the smoke from Manhattan.
The windows have been opened to let out the stale air of the old year.
In Japan, it is a tradition to have soba noodle at the end of the year to salute the old year and welcome the new one.