True or false: Six New Year themed 'facts' from around the world

New Year celebrations: Pregnant pranks, smashing guitars and insect roulette.

One of my favourite things in the world which I like doing more than anything else is travelling and over the years I’ve been lucky enough to experience New Year celebrations in England, Scotland, Tanzania, Thailand, Vietnam and Fiji.

So following on from my previous True Or False posts for Halloween and Christmas, here’s another True Or False quiz featuring traditions from round the world to celebrate the new year. Just to clarify, some of these ‘facts’ are true but others are totally made-up. See if you can guess which is which...

Guitars beware.  Prepare for a smashing time at a Fijian New Year.

Fact 1) Fiji – Lock up your guitars!

In Fiji the locals have the strange but fun tradition of smashing up a guitar (rock star style) to see in the New Year. If you don’t want to destroy your precious guitar (or if you’re a tourist who forgot to pack a guitar in your backpack) then you can buy miniature sized guitars purely for the purpose of smashing up. I decided to join in with the local custom when I was in Fiji for New Year and I have to say it was a lot of fun and very satisfying to re-enact the classic guitar smashing ritual.

Charles Fudgemuffin's New Year's resolutions

Charles Fudgemuffin's plans for 2013.

Start a band. A cool New Year's resolution.

A few days ago I posted a list of the top ten most popular New Year’s Resolutions, and also included a few amusing resolutions I stumbled across while doing my research. To carry on the New Year theme, I thought I would post my own New Year’s Resolutions for the coming year.

Before I do though, here are a few more cool noteworthy New Year’s Resolutions I came across while compiling the top ten for my previous post:

1) "Take a picture of myself every day for a year and post a time lapse video on YouTube."

This is a cool idea which I’m tempted to do myself (not for YouTube, just for my own entertainment). It would probably be cooler though if you had just got a puppy or a kitten, then when you watched the finished video you would be able to see it growing before your eyes.


2) "Start a band."

I would definitely recommend this resolution to anyone who loves music. It can involve a fair amount of work to get a band up and running, but once the ball is rolling it’s a total buzz to record your own songs and to play live to an enthusiastic audience.

Top ten New Year's resolutions

The tradition of making resolutions to celebrate the New Year.

Start the year with a change for the better.

To see in the New Year I thought I would compile a top ten of the most popular New Year’s resolutions that people make each year. Just to clarify though, this isn’t a comprehensive scientific report or survey. I’ve simply looked up a load of top ten charts and tables on the internet and then compiled the results into an overall chart based on which New Year’s resolutions featured the most often.

Before I get to the results though, here are a few amusing New Year’s resolutions I stumbled upon while compiling my statistics:

"I’ll think of new excuses for when I ring in sick."

"On days when I’m ‘working from home’ I will actually work from home."

Christmas memes

I'm feeling in a festive mood, so here are a few memes based on a Christmas theme.

1) Talking rubbish

The first meme is two bins discussing whether Santa Claus is real or not, and it features a cheesy punchline.

Bin 1: "Santa Claus isn't real."
Bin 2: "You're talking rubbish!"

For the benefit of any American readers, that translates as:

Bin 1: "Santa Claus isn't real."
Bin 2: "You're talking garbage!"

Santa Claus arrives on the roof on Christmas Eve

Bringing the magic of Santa to life for kids with a free Santa mp3.

Santa Claus arriving on the roof on Christmas Eve.

A couple of weeks ago a mate of mine mentioned a cool idea he had for Christmas Eve. His plan was to record and mix a soundtrack of Santa Claus arriving on the roof and delivering his presents. Then on Christmas Eve he would place some speakers in the loft above his kid's bedroom, and just as his kid was about to go to sleep he would play the Santa soundtrack so that it sounds as if Santa is landing on the roof and delivering his presents.

It sounded quite ambitious but also a really cool idea, and I can imagine how exciting it would be for a young child to hear Santa arriving on the roof on Christmas Eve. Anyway, we recorded the soundtrack and I have to say we were both really pleased with the finished results.

Searching for Santa on Google

The curious nature of kids when using Google to investigate Santa.

Santa taking a well deserved break
from his present delivering duties.

In one of my previous posts, I mentioned that as well as the Google search engine, Google also have a service known as the Google Keyword Tool which allows you to analyse how many searches a particular search term gets on Google every month.

Some of the search terms I discussed were the search term, ‘Is Santa real?’, which gets 301,000 searches every month from quizzical and possibly sceptical kids, and also, ‘What is Santa’s real phone number?’, which gets 320 searches per month.

As it’s only a few days until Christmas I therefore thought this would be an appropriate time to feature another post on Santa related searches on Google.

The most popular Santa themed Google search I could find was the massively popular, ‘Where is Santa at?’, which gets an incredible 83,100,000 searches every month. By comparison the search term, ‘What’s the true meaning of Christmas?’, gets a paltry 170 searches per month, so it’s nice to know that modern kids seem to have their priorities straight!

A Christmas message from Charles Fudgemuffin

A short but heart-warming Christmas video message from Charles Fudgemuffin to everyone who has visited his blog this year.

Charles Fudgemuffin getting into the festive spirit.

Like many people, I always get completely carried away and sometimes even over-emotional at Christmas with the whole warmth and joy of this wonderful time of year. So to express my feelings I thought it would be a nice idea to create a short but touching Christmas video message which hopefully captures the uplifting and heart-warming spirit of Christmas.

As I say, I can sometimes get a little over-emotional with the whole Christmas spirit, so apologies in advance if my emotions get the better of me and it all gets a bit mushy...