Technically I threw half an apple. It was New Year’s Eve, 2021, staring 2022 in the face. My son, Jamin, and his wife Valerie was home from Austin for the weekend and I only had the one apple. He asked, “Would it work if we split it.” Nova (Grandson, my daughter’s son) wanted in on the fun, but I had no other apples. So he threw an orange!
What does this mean? Just a silly tradition, really. Somewhere around 1990, while I was youth pastor, we had our youth group over at our house for a new year’s party. We were looking for something to do to ring in the new year. We gathered noisemakers like a drum, cowbell, tambourine, etc., and were going to go outside and make some noise. It seemed something was missing. New York has a big ball dropping. Somehow that morphed into, since New York is the big apple, we would drop an apple. So we climbed onto the roof of my garage, and at midnight made noise and threw an apple.
Somehow the idea stuck. The next year my brother wanted to throw an apple with me, and so we did, for many years in a row. One of those early years we were driving to a youth event, one of those all-nighters, and we were running very late. As the clock neared midnight we knew we wouldn’t make it to our destination, so we pulled over on the side of the road to throw our apples. A state trooper pulled up behind, got out and asked what we were doing on the side of the road. How do you say, “We had to stop and throw an apple.” We mumbled something about not wanting to be driving when the New Year struck.
I’ve thrown the apple with my kids many years, and a few times with friends. One year, with a group of young adults, we wrote the things we wanted to leave behind on our apple and threw it down Washington St. in downtown El Dorado. Occasionally I will take a bite out of it before I throw it.
I haven’t built a religion around throwing an apple at new year’s. I’ve even missed some years. Most notably I didn’t throw an apple to usher in 2020 and 2021 and you see how that turned out. New Year’s Eve, 2021, I had all my kids and grand kids under one roof. Everyone but Myla made it to midnight (Myla passed out at 11:45). And we threw that apple (and orange). We threw it hard.
This New Year’s Eve, anticipating rolling over to 2023, my family is together again, along with a few friends. I’m prepared with multiple apples and we are going to let the rip!
Does throwing the apple really mean the new year will be better? I don’t know, but having my family together brings much joy.
HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!
