New Year’s Eve Celebrations in Antigua Guatemala

Yo no olvido al año viejo (I don’t forget the old year)
Porque me ha dejado cosas muy buenas: (Because it left behind good things for me:)
Me dejó una chiva, (It left me a goat,)
Una burra negra, (a black donkey)
Una yegua blanca (a white female horse)
Y una buena suegra… (And a good mother-in-law…)

This song is played at every single party and danced to… El Año Viejo. There’s a fragment of the song above to get you started singing. Also, I leave you the most famous version of El Año Viejo by Tony Camargo. This song is quite possibly the most-often-played track throughout Latin America on New Year’s Eve.

There are several things that make New Year’s Eve similar yet different than Christmas Eve or Noche Buena, as we call it here. Christmas Eve is celebrated with the family at home or at your parents’ home; New Year’s Eve can be celebrated anywhere: a discotheque, a park, the beach or La Calle del Arco and Parque Central will be the popular venues in Antigua Guatemala tonight. New Year’s Eve is less religious than Christmas’ Eve and there are many more parties to go to.

My best wishes to everyone and please have the happiest New Year Celebration Ever!

I would like to take this opportunity to thank all the wonderful people who have supported AntiguaDailyPhoto through donations, left comments or sent feedback. I want to send a big THANK YOU to all of you who supported my efforts economically. A very special THANK YOU to all the guest contributors who made AntiguaDailyPhoto a richer, polyphonic resource for all things Guatemala.

We close the year 2013 with 2826 pages, 14,632 comments and 3,795,665 visits (at the time of writing). That’s over 3 3/4 million visits thus far!

Please, let us know what were your favorite entries, your favorite series, or your favorite photos of the year. THANKS!

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