Revelers gathered at the Festhalle in Helen Friday to ring in the New Year. The annual celebration – billed as a family-friendly event – returned this year with music, food, dancing and the annual Dropping of the Edelweiss.
As the final seconds of 2021 ticked off the clock, people gathered outside under umbrellas to count down to the New Year.
The Edelweiss Drop started nine years ago. It’s named after the European mountain flower made famous in the eponymous song from the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, The Sound of Music.
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The event was canceled last year because of the pandemic. Although COVID-19 is again surging in Georgia, organizers opted to continue with this year’s celebration, and they weren’t alone. New Year’s partiers also turned out Friday for The Possum Drop in Tallapoosa and the Shamrock Drop in Dublin.
The revelry also returned to New York’s Times Square, where a scaled-back crowd of about 15,000 watched in-person as the iconic Times Square ball dropped to usher in 2022.
Still, not all celebrations continued as planned. Several North Georgia area New Year’s celebrations were canceled due to public health concerns including Lumpkin County’s First Night Dahlonega and Atlanta’s Peach Drop.
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