This year’s Good Riddance Day event in Times Square offers participants the opportunity to close the curtain on any unhappy memories from 2025 and usher in the new year, allowing all to enter 2026 feeling lighter and with a clean slate.
Jonathan Bennett, host of the Times Square New Year’s Eve celebration, leads the event where participants join him in tossing out bad, unpleasant memories. Participants write their bad memories on oversized tickets that they tear (as a theater usher would at a show), toss the larger portion into a trash can, keep the smaller portion as a memento, and take a bow. As a grand finale, a large, theater-style curtain literally and symbolically closes on 2025.
