New Years traditions

wren

For the witches and practitioners of the forum, do you have any new years traditions related to your craft? What are you getting up to?
I usually do a bit of reflective journalling and come up with things I want to release/lay to rest from the current year, and goals/focuses for the new year to come, do a kind of "release" working for the former, any relevant workings for the latter, and a big ole cleanse of the space. The minutiae vary year-on-year, but those have been the core features for the last several years or so. How about all of you?

Trae Dorn

Most of my personal stuff focuses on the wheel of the year cycle moreso than the common calendar, so I guess I don't really do much.

Mostly I just watch the ritualistic dropping of a shiny ball in the great gathering square on TV with my wife. 😛

wren

Trae Dorn that makes sense! New years and Halloween are the two common calendar events I still observe. Halloween because it's not at the same time as Samhain here in Australia, so it's easy to celebrate both.

I don't follow the whole WOTY but do follow the fire festivals, and I've found that because of where Samhain is placed in the year in my part of the world, I can do my regular new year and my witchy new year and have two "phases" to the year to observe.

Syntheros Artemidos

it's only partially related to my craft, but i tend to do a huge deep clean/declutter of my space, which does include my altar. i may or may not currently be procrastinating doing that very thing, tbh.

Lozzie Stardust

Having grown up using the 'standard' calendar my brain still likes to associate new year with 'new starts'

Finally put a biggg stack of laundry away 😂. Scottish FIL always brings a drink & a bit of coal if he goes anywhere for new years as a 'wealth & warmth' greeting. He says it's a Celtic tradition which I'd like to look into.

Also will re-do my new Year jar spell from last year.

wren

Lozzie Stardust Oh interesting Lozzie. What your FIL does sounds like First Footing! I've been reading about it a bit lately myself as while I'm born and raised in Aus, my recent family (grandparents) are from the Scottish Highlands and Northern England respectively.

Dorothea

I break out the cards and do some divination. Usually I use the Tea Leaf Fortune Card's the coming year method, so I get some insight for all twelve months.

Nothing much beyond that, since the New Years doesn't really mean much to me.

aeseofspades

I always do a year-ahead tarot reading for myself on New Year's Day. This year, I plan on resetting my altars and starting a month-long deep clean of my entire apartment. It's long overdue, and what better time to reset the space than a new year?

My partner and I also plan on doing a little hotpot for NYE while we watch movies, play games, and then watch the ball drop. I'm big into food magic, so everything with the hotpot will have a magical purpose of some kind. Nothing like mix and match spellwork to start the new year right!

electricbudgie

I'm a little late to this, sorry!
I'm in my mid-30's and it's only been in the past few years that January 1st actually feels like a fresh start; I always associated a fresh start with September due to being in school and that being when the school year started, so I'm curious to how many other people have felt that way.
ANYWAYS, I've been wanting to try and do a ritual very similar to OP's idea of coming up with things to release from the past year. I came up with a working/spell last year but didn't have enough spoons to go through with it, so I'm going to try to do it this week.
I hadn't thought of doing a journaling session beforehand though, that's a really good idea instead of deciding to come up with stuff on the spot during a working.