Until 1974, New Year's Day wasn't a public holiday in England, so our New Year celebrations were pretty quiet and I never thought of Dec 31st as anything particularly special. I'd been visiting my father and step-mother in Menorca over Christmas; due to the lack of flights over New Year I had to fly back on Sunday 30th Dec, then froze my parts off at RAFC Cranwell as all the heating was off until the afternoon of 1 Jan*..... After which came the joy of the 3-day week, 17% inflation etc.
I've done a few deployments and/or QRA over the period - at Wattisham, our Luftwaffe exchange mates turned up at the Q-shed with a little 'low alcohol' sekt to toast the New Year. Whereupon, at midnight, 'BK' who was Duty Force Controller for the night decided to ring Battle Flight at Wildenrath to wish them a Happy New Year....
"Thank you - but it's 01:00 and you've just woken us all up!", came the reply - he'd forgotten about the time zone....
*When the heating came back on, the damage caused to all the cold-soaked infrastructure cost a lot more to repair than would have been the cost to keep the heating on...