Parties to ring in a new year can be legendary — for reasons both worthy and unworthy of note to friends and co-workers.

Symbols of the event have changed in recent decades, no doubt to reflect the evolution of visual media. There’s the “ball drop” in New York City’s Times Square, started in 1907 and the origin of numerous copycat “drops” of various items across the country on New Year’s Eve. It’s legend, bordering on misnomer, that the 12-foot Waterford crystal ball is “dropped.” It’s merely lowered down the pole so ABC can show it all again next year.

Black-eye peas as a good luck charm worked its way into the routine at some point long ago. I pass on that; just can’t put down the ham and macaroni long enough to get into peas.

The song we sing, Auld Lang Syne, is based on a legend of sorts, that of poet Robert Burns’ 18th century romp of a Scots ode to tipsiness. Some say you should kiss your loved one at the stroke of midnight, before you sing the song, obviously. This is advisable for unmarried adults only if the volume of said adults, of course represented by a line on a graph, intersects with another line showing the amount of champagne consumed before the witching hour. Photos taken from across the room usually show if you pass that little trig test or not.

An interesting little legend is that of Pope Sylvester I, for whom Dec. 31 is observed as the liturgical feast day “Silvester” in Eastern Europe and along parts of the Mediterranean.

Legend told in the early fifth century, or a hundred or so years after Sylvester died, the Roman emperor Constantine (pre-conversion, of course) was a pagan oppressor who ordered all Christians to sacrifice. Pope Sylvester had none of this, and, along with the clergy, fled to the mountains of present-day central Italy to escape the persecution. Eventually, the early pope baptizes a born-again Constantine and heals the emperor’s leprosy in the process. Ah, but that’s not the end of Sylvester’s day. He defeated a fierce, fire-breathing dragon that had been terrorizing Rome up to then.

It’s a story that German author Hans Pohlsander noted, likely with eyes rolling, in “The Emperor Constantine.”

“All this, supposedly, takes place right after Constantine has entered the city,” he writes. “Chronology alone bids us at once to dismiss this whole account as fiction: Sylvester did not become pope until 314.” (Two years after his arrival in the city as he fought rival Maxentius).

Now, it’s been said a person can breathe fire after having a little too much holiday cheer. If you see medieval emperors and bearded popes running around as you ring in the new year, it’s probably time to put your fluted glass down!

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Danny Barrett Jr. is the assistant managing editor. He can be reached by email at danny.barrett@vicksburgpost.com.