New Year’s Eve at home with kids, with an early midnight

Young children want to celebrate New Year’s Eve and can’t stay up for it. The answer is to move midnight. Somewhere in the world the new year arrives close to the time your children should be going to bed, and you can count down with that city instead.

Borrow a midnight

Choose a city whose midnight falls at a sensible hour where you live.

• When it is midnight in London, it is 7 pm in New York and 4 pm in Los Angeles.
• When it is midnight in Rio de Janeiro, it is 7 pm in Los Angeles and 10 pm in New York. Midnight in London is also 6 pm in Chicago.
• When it is midnight in Dubai, it is 8 pm in London and 9 pm in Berlin.

A world clock app will find a match for any time zone. Tell the children which city you are celebrating with, find it on a map, and look up one fact about it. Live streams of New Year fireworks from big cities are often available online. Check beforehand that your chosen city’s stream plays in your country, and keep a recording of an earlier display as a backup.

One bag an hour

Countdown bags turn the evening into a series of small events. Number a paper bag for each hour before your early midnight, plus one for the last ten minutes. Put one activity inside each, and open each bag when the clock says so.

A four-bag version:

• Bag 1: decorate party hats. Plain paper hats, stickers and markers.
• Bag 2: a game. A printed game the whole family plays at the table.
• Bag 3: the fancy drink. Sparkling juice in plastic flutes. Each person says one good thing about the year.
• Bag 4: the countdown kit. Party horns, glow sticks and streamers.

For a 7 pm midnight, open the first three bags at 4, 5 and 6 pm, and the last one at 6:50. Add or remove bags to fit your evening. Clock faces drawn on the bags help children who can’t yet tell the time.

Make a time capsule

The end of the year is a good moment to record who everyone was. Give each child a page to fill in and seal the pages in a box to open next New Year’s Eve.

• Height, and a hand traced on paper
• Favorite food, song, book and friend
• The best thing that happened this year
• One thing they want to learn next year
• A prediction for next year, the sillier the better

Adults can fill one in too. Next year, reading the old answers aloud can open the evening.

The countdown itself

Count down from ten with the lights low, then go all out: horns, glow sticks, streamers, and pots and wooden spoons on the doorstep if the neighbors are friendly. Follow it with a toast, a family photo and then bed.

A few practical notes. Paper streamers are easier to clean up than confetti. If you use party poppers, adults should fire them, pointed away from faces. Glow sticks are for waving, not for chewing or cutting open. Keep uninflated latex balloons away from children under eight, and pick up and throw away the pieces of a burst balloon right away. They are a choking and suffocation hazard.

Food that feels like a party

Serve dinner as finger food, so that it feels different from an ordinary evening: small sandwiches, vegetables, cheese and fruit on a platter. For children under five, cut grapes and cherry tomatoes into quarters lengthwise, slice cheese thin instead of cubing it, and serve soft or cooked vegetables in place of raw carrot sticks. Let the children name the menu and write it on a card.

After they are asleep

Whoever is still awake gets the real midnight in peace, in a living room that is already decorated.