Israel and China are the two countries in the world whose residents go to sleep earliest on New Year's Eve, according to a data analysis conducted by California-based wearable device company Jawbone and based on its fitness trackers worn around the world.

That doesn't mean there aren't pockets of celebration in Israel for New Year's Eve, or Sylvester, as it is known here, after the Catholic saint of the same name.

But while bars and clubs in Israel have Sylvester parties galore, widespread celebration in private homes and restaurants is less common than in many other parts of the world, not least because nursing a hangover is tougher when January 1 is a work day like any other.

This low profile means that, though Israelis will join the rest of the world in writing "2015" on any checks dated Thursday, New Year's doesn't have the status of a generic civil holiday when banks, post offices and public schools are closed. This implicitly makes the day seem more like a non-Jewish holiday, one that some rabbis say Jews should actively stay away from celebrating.

The Catholic Encyclopedia describes New Year's Day as having been sanctified by commemorating the circumcision of Jesus on that day, adding that "Christians did not wish to make the celebration of this feast very solemn, lest they might seem to countenance in any way the pagan extravagance of the opening year."



For both Israel and China, of course, the Gregorian year is not the only one that comes with its own festivities.

Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year's, isn't exactly a stay-up-and-watch-the-ball-drop kind of celebration. It's more about an annual reevaluation of your life (and your sins), not to mention that most Jewish of traditions: stuffing your face with the mishpacha.

In China, though, residents do stay up late to mark the new year – just not the one that ends on December 31. Instead, 800 million people stay up with their families to usher in the Chinese New Year, according to Jawbone.

In Israel, one of the pockets where New Year's Eve is a big deal is among the country's approximately 1 million immigrants from the former Soviet Union and their families. That should be no surprise considering that the data show that Russians, along with Ukrainians and Romanians, stay up later on New Year's Eve than residents of any other country in the world.

