Quiet celebrations end a strange year
If ever a year’s end seemed like a cause for celebration, 2020 might be it. Yet the coronavirus scourge that dominated the year is also looming over New Year festivities and forcing officials worldwide to tone them down.
Big public blowouts are being turned into TV-only and digital events. Fireworks displays have been cancelled from the Las Vegas Strip to the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. Even private parties in some places are restricted.
The occasion stirs mixed feelings for people like Cesar Soltero, who was taking photos, and taking stock, in New York City’s Times Square this week.
‘‘I’m going to celebrate that I’m alive, but I’m not precisely too happy for this year,’’ said Soltero, 36, an engineer visiting from Orlando, Florida instead of making his usual holiday trip to see family in Mexico.
The Times Square celebration will unfold this year without the usual throngs of cheering, kissing revellers. Police will block off the area so spectators can’t get a glimpse.
The event’s special guests will be first responders and essential workers. Each will watch from a private, wellspaced area. The night’s performances – including disco diva Gloria Gaynor’s singing of the apt-for-2020 anthem I Will Survive – will be aimed at TV audiences.
New Year’s Eve will look different around the world after a year in which the virus killed an estimated 1.8 million people, including more than 330,000 in the United States.
Germany has banned the sale of fireworks, which residents usually set off in on the streets, and a pyrotechnics show at Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate is off.
So, too, are the fireworks over the River Thames in locked-down London, where New Year’s Eve also marks Britain’s final economic split from the European Union. However, Big Ben, which has been largely silent since 2017 while its clock tower is restored, will sound 12 bongs at midnight.
The Netherlands has moved the national countdown from an Amsterdam park to a football stadium, where spectators won’t be allowed and pyrotechnics will be replaced with ‘‘electric fireworks’’. In Rome, the fireworks are still on, but customary concerts in public plazas have been scrapped in favour of livestreamed performances and art installations. Pope Francis will skip his typical December 31 visit to the Vatican’s lifesized nativity scene in St Peter’s Square, and plans to deliver his New Year’s Day blessing indoors.
Rio de Janeiro has banned the fireworks, open-air concerts and rooftop parties that draw crowds of white-clad revellers in the Copacabana neighbourhood, where only residents will be allowed. New Year’s Eve is one of the busiest days of the year at Paulo Roberto Senna’s Copacabana beach stand, but the 57-year-old said he was
OK with the shutdown. ‘‘No money can buy our health!’’
In Russia, public events have been banned or restricted in many regions. But the country’s so-called New Year’s Eve capital, the city of Kaluga, 150 kilometres southwest of Moscow, is luring tourists with a week of festivities, despite pleas from residents to cancel.
Turkey has declared a four-day lockdown starting on New Year’s Eve, and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has warned that security forces will inspect hotels for illicit parties.
In the US, the Christmas morning bombing in downtown Nashville, Tennessee has led the city to cancel its plan to light fireworks and blow up a 2020 sign. ‘‘To say it would have been tone deaf would be an understatement,’’ said Bruce Spyridon, president of the Nashville Convention and Visitors Corporation.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has suggested a new way of observing the holiday – lighting candles to honour Covid-19 victims and frontline workers, and to hope for a healthy 2021.
‘‘I’m going to celebrate that I’m alive, but I’m not precisely too happy for this year.’’
Cesar Soltero, 36, American