Balloons cascade down onto the crowd during the Durham Museum’s Noon Year’s Eve celebration inside Union Station’s Great Hall. Image courtesy of the Durham Museum.
By Gabriel Escalera
The Durham Museum’s Noon Year’s Eve
December 30th, 2025
For many families with young children, New Year’s Eve brings an impossible choice, stay up too late with exhausted kids, or skip the celebration altogether. At the Durham Museum, there is a third option, celebrate the new year at noon.
Every year, families gather inside Union Station’s Great Hall for Noon Year’s Eve, a daytime celebration complete with live music, hands on activities, crafts, and a countdown that ends not with fireworks at midnight but with a joyful balloon drop at twelve o’clock sharp.
Scott Eastman, the museum’s Director of Marketing and Public Relations, says the event began in a much smaller and simpler way.
It started as a playful moment during a children’s winter camp, when campers created their own homemade New Year’s countdown. That small activity quickly became a favorite, and over time it grew into a full museum wide event that now draws families from across the community.
Today, Noon Year’s Eve fills the Great Hall with energy and motion. Children dance to live music from Dino O’Dell and the T Rex All Stars, families move between craft tables and interactive stations, and visitors explore the museum’s current exhibitions, from hands on science and sports displays to elegant historic collections.
But the highlight remains the countdown itself.
Instead of watching a ball descend from a skyscraper, families look up as nets suspended from the ceiling release thousands of balloons that float and tumble down into the crowd below. The Great Hall becomes a sea of color and laughter as children and adults reach up, jump, and gather balloons, many of which make their way home as souvenirs of the day.
The timing solves more than one problem. Children get to experience the ritual and excitement of welcoming a new year, parents avoid the challenge of keeping tired kids awake past bedtime, and families still have the rest of the day free to enjoy together.
This year, the celebration also connects to the museum’s fiftieth anniversary. A special sock skating pond has been added, featuring historic winter photographs of Omaha neighborhoods, inviting visitors to literally step into the city’s past while celebrating its future.
The event has become one of the museum’s most popular seasonal offerings, and it often sells out. Eastman encourages families to plan ahead and purchase tickets early.
At the Durham Museum, the new year arrives not with exhaustion and yawns, but with music, movement, balloons, and the simple joy of celebrating together, right at noon.
