Panama, the southernmost land on the Central America, celebrates its New Year on January 1st, according to the Georgian calendar. New Year is a time of the year when the natives of Panama like to have a good gala time.
They spend most of their New Year’s time in the company of great food, fine wine, and festivities cored around dancing, singing, and music, along with the brilliant show of fireworks in the midnight.
Apart from the hot party culture, Panama people put an equal amount of consideration to follow their rituals, customs, and traditions in the way they celebrate their New Year. New Year is considered to be a time source of passing on those customs and traditions to the future generations.
New Year Celebrations in Panama
Though the entire Panama celebrates New Year with great grandeur and vigor, but the Panama beach parties are something which highlights the Panama New Year celebrations. While some prefer to be a part of the modern day parties hosted by famous night clubs, discotheques, and pub of the town, some other prefer it to go for an unconventional New Year celebration.
People with close friends or family members, or love partner; move out to beaches to celebrate the arrival of the new time under the open sky of Panama. Sailing over the cruises, and witnessing the illuminated city from the mid sea is pleasantly bizarre and unforgettable.
One can also experience different New Year celebrations by participating in the street parties and bounce houses as organized at Pier Park. The party saw numbers of stilt walkers, street performers, musicians, dancers, face painters, and many other artists of various genres participating in it.
A fireworks show at midnight over the Gulf of Mexico, and a family ball drop event are the highlighted aspects of this event. People enjoy the most of the moment by cheering and dancing to the tunes of live performers, performing on demand of the throng.
At the time of the arrival of the New Year, i.e. twelve at the midnight, everyone wishes each other with best luck for the coming time. Also, they pray for a peaceful and prosperous time ahead, and also promise themselves to be end up as better human beings by the end of it.
Traditional New Year Celebrations in Panama
There are certain New Year traditions necessarily required to be followed, without which no New Year celebration is considered to be absolute in Panama. It includes burning fires, which represents for burning the evil spirits negativities, failures, and bad luck of the past time.
There is also a tradition of crafting life-size effigies of prominent people, which are culturally called as New Year’s munecos, and then burning them in the bonfires on the midnight of the New Year. New year’s munecos are considered as the symbol of the Old Year and burning them represents for burning the troubles, miseries, and evil energies of that past time.
Hosting extravagant drinking parties on New Year’s Eve is prominently followed almost amongst everyone in Panama. The event allows one to have an unchecked drinking bash go all through the night. Traditionally, drinking is considered to represent for an ancient ritual, according to which, drinking symbolizes for the personal recreating of the chaotic world which existed before the time God created a systematic way of life and universe
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