By John Haughey
Contributing Writer
Millions worldwide were set Wednesday to watch a crystal ball descend 139 feet down a flagpole in Manhattan’s Time Square as a throng of thousands count down the last 10 seconds of 2025 and usher 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 were expected to 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’d 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.
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 drop — a “whiskey boot” in Prescott, Arizona; flip-flops in Folly Beach, South Carolina — and pants are run up and down flagpoles, including yellow breeches on Yellow Breeches Creek in Lititz, Pennsylvania.
Marine life is 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” rises and falls to the occasion like a true hard-shelled urbanite.
Birds of all feathers dive into posterity, most commonly eagles, pelicans and ducks, but in Perry, Georgia, a buzzard wings in the New Year.
Stuffed beavers, bears, goats, a hamster and a flying pig are among cherished critters descending to applause with a live possum the honoree in Tallapoosa, Georgia. When it comes to the most distinctive New Year drops, Georgia and Pennsylvania top the list.
Vegetables and fruits are frequent fallers. Oranges, blueberries, pineapples, peaches, watermelons, grapes, cherries, strawberries, acorns, mushrooms, lemons, peanuts, olives, lettuce, potatoes, chili peppers and apples — including apples with arrows shot through them — take the plunge. There are pickle drops, but the one in Dillsburg, Pennsylvania, 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, Pennsylvania, where a lion defiantly hoists a cigar, but in a parking lot rather than from the municipal building — horseshoes, and gumbo pots all mark the passage of time and decorum.
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, Pennsylvania, would be included but confirming if that was happening this year is too much of a headache, and if others are overlooked, someone in marketing dropped the ball.
— 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 6-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 6-foot queen conch shell drops 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.
— Unadilla, Georgia: A pig-shaped sign was to be lowered in awestruck reverence during the ninth annual “Hog Drop” that includes a barbecue competition, Monster Truck show, dirt bike stunts, fire breathers, racing pigs, chainsaw sculptors and axe-throwers.
— 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 was to 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.”
— Detroit: The ninth annual “D Burst” was to 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.
— St. Paul, Minnesota: The Midway Saloon again planned to 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 7-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.
— Oak Ridge, Tennessee: Revelers could 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.
— 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” draws 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.”
