New Year's Tradition

For a long time, my family was never quite satisfied with the way we celebrated New Year's.  We always did different things, went to different parties, but never liked it.  Then one year when my younger brother and I were both in elementary school (I was probably in about third grade), my parents decided to have us each invite a friend over to spend the night on New Year's Eve.  When we were younger, my parents would set the clocks back two hours so that when it was really 10 o'clock, we thought it was midnight, and we'd go out on our court banging pots and pans and yelling happy new year.  I didn't even know.  But now we definitely stay up later, and we actually go out front and bang pots and pans at midnight.  We also drink sparkling cider and do crackers.  They're these little things that you pull open and they have a dumb little toy, a paper crown, and a joke inside.  Pretty cool, huh?