For some people, New Year’s Eve is not about parties and fireworks. It’s a spiritual event, a sacred time. They believe that the end of one year and beginning of another is not a time for stress and hyperactivity but a moment to embark on a spiritual journey.
This spiritual excursion typically involves a series of rituals or rites. Throughout history, rituals have helped people make difficult or momentous transitions by connecting these events to the bigger picture.
Our daily lives are full of practical concerns that demand attention—jobs, health issues, housing, relationships and financial responsibilities. It’s hard to detach from these issues and take time to tend to our spiritual selves. Ironically, our ability to cope with our physical lives improves when we focus on our spiritual lives.
Why This Day?
New Year’s Eve prompts us to look back or reflect on what we experienced the previous year and what we hope to experience in the New Year. Why?
The turn of the year triggers one of the most powerful motivations in humans: the drive to survive. Like birthdays, the New Year’s holiday is a reminder that we made it through the last 365 days and that we wish to make it through another year. Resolutions are an attempt to improve our survival odds.
Spirituality is about survival, too. For example, being confident and calm is more likely to keep you physically healthy and help you excel at your personal and professional relationships than being stressed, while praying to an omnipotent force is more likely to keep you safe.
New Year’s Eve inspires us to improve the quality of our lives as it urges us to increase the quantity of our days.
12 Spiritual Alternatives for New Year’s Eve
You don’t have to be deeply religious to have a more spiritual New Year’s Eve. Here are 12 ways to add spiritual value and meaning to this holiday.
1. Practice Stillness and Meditation
Spending New Year’s Eve in prayer or meditation can do more for you in the short and the long run than a night of partying. You can do this at home, a church, temple or, weather permitting, outside in nature. Practicing stillness and meditation is a simple but powerful way to start the year.
2. Host a Spiritual New Year’s Eve Get-Together
Invite spiritually minded friends to celebrate New Year’s Eve with you. You can eat, talk and meditate or pray. Ask your guests to bring old magazines and boards to create vision boards for the New Year.
3. Focus on Gratitude
We spend so much time thinking about what we want that we fail to appreciate what we have. Take time on New Year’s Eve to make a gratitude list. Maybe you’re blessed with a loyal spouse or a supportive boss. Unless you’re homeless, you have shelter, water, appliances and clothes that keep you warm in the winter. You’ll find yourself writing way past midnight.
4. Act Kindly
Perform one small act of kindness. Mow your elderly neighbor’s lawn. Bring lunch for a co-worker who is struggling. Babysit for a single mom who needs a day off. Visit someone at the hospital. Decide to be kind to someone every day of the upcoming year. You may be helping others, but it will change your life.
5. Leave Something Behind
Many of us concentrate on attaining things while neglecting to get rid of things that we don’t need or that we’re better off not having. Identify the things, behaviors, people, places and attitudes that make you feel stuck and resolve to leave them behind in the New Year.
6. Clear Out the Old Energy
People in some parts of world throw out old clothes, furniture and other objects on New Year’s Eve to release the old from their lives and make room for the new. It’s the perfect day to open the windows, burn some incense and get rid of stuff.
7. Forgive Someone
The offense could be something recent, like a betrayal, or an old grudge you’ve been holding on for years or decades. Whatever it is, as the countdown to midnight begins on New Year’s Eve, focus intently on forgiving that person (or persons) for good. Ask your higher power to help you do this.
8. Write a Letter to Yourself
Start a New Year’s Eve tradition of writing a letter to yourself about your struggles and accomplishments. Advise yourself like you would advise a friend who needs your help and support. Save the letter and read it every time you need encouragement.
9. Invite Prosperity Into Your Life
Many cultures throughout the world hold New Year’s Eve traditions meant to ward off bad luck and attract good fortune and prosperity. Some eat round foods meant to represent coins, such as lentils in Italy, to attract wealth. When we struggle financially, a poverty mentality can become a habit and attract more poverty. Say a prayer or write a declaration to formally invite and accept prosperity in your life.
10. Attend a Religious Service
Attend a religious service on New Year’s Eve. Whether it’s a mass or a small candlelit service at a church, temple or sanctuary, a solemn religious ritual can get you in the right mindset for the New Year.
11. Make Joy Resolutions
Make resolutions that give you joy. It can be something as simple as talking daily or weekly walks in a nearby park or sitting quietly in your back porch to read books you love. Maybe you find joy rescuing animals, painting or becoming a pastry chef.
12. Take a Bath and Go to Bed Early
Water plays a key role in many spiritual rituals. In addition to getting rid of dirt, water flushes out negative energy. Take a bath on New Year’s Eve, go to bed early and wake up on New Year’s Day with a clean body and spirit instead of a hangover.