Beverly’s New Year’s Eve celebration once drew thousands. Now it’s cancelled due to lack of interest.

Local News

After nearly three decades, Beverly’s First Night has fallen by the wayside amid a decline in attendance and volunteers.

First Night Fireworks explode over the Public Garden on New Year’s Eve in Boston. Jessica Rinaldi/Boston Globe Staff, File

With myriad ways to celebrate New Year’s Eve around Greater Boston, one North Shore holiday tradition has fallen by the wayside amid dwindling attendance and volunteers.

Local nonprofit Beverly Main Streets recently announced that the group will not be hosting its annual Beverly’s New Year event on Dec. 31, ending a nearly three-decade tradition.

“Over the past five years the event has seen a decrease in attendance and financial support, and it has also become increasingly difficult to find enough volunteers to safely and effectively manage the event,” Paul Gentile, chairperson of the Beverly Main Streets Board of Directors, explained in a letter to the community. 

The event launched in 1994 as First Night Beverly, according to The Boston Globe. The festival once drew thousands to Beverly’s downtown area for train rides, crafts, games, live performances, cookie decorating, and more. 

Beverly’s New Year was even praised as “the North Shore’s best family-friendly celebration of the New Year,” according to the Herald Citizen, a local newspaper. 

The event “has a rich history in our community,” Gentile acknowledged, even as he described the lack of resources that made a 2023 festival unfeasible. 

“We hated to shut it down, but you’ve got to look at the numbers and the amount of effort that you’re putting into things and how best to use our time and energy,” he told The Salem News. “For this year, at least, we just couldn’t pull it off.”

Beverly’s First Night was not held in 2020 and 2021 due to COVID-19 and suffered from low attendance and rainy weather during last year’s event, the local newspaper reported. 

In his letter to the community, Gentile encouraged North Shore residents to attend Beverly Main Streets’ Downtown Winter Market on Friday and Saturday evening for an alternative dose of holiday cheer. 

“The goal of the Downtown Winter Market, which is a brand new event, is to drive support to our small business community,” he explained. “They are truly the heart of our downtown district, and shopping small keeps them in the focus of the holiday season.”

Gentile also said Beverly Main Streets is open to bringing Beverly’s New Year back, though he said doing so will take better funding and staffing.

“It was a great community program for decades,” he elaborated in his interview with The Salem News. “We would love to bring it back, but we need fresh bodies and energy.”