Way to spend time in The new year's holiday

How do you spend a time in during new year's holiday?
First of all, I'd like to introduce typical Japanese new year's holiday.

Many people watch the TV show called Kouhaku(An annual music program) at the night of year-end on New Year's Eve. This program is supposed to end just before the new year in comes. When the new year comes, they greet each other with saying "Akemashite Omedetou Gozaimasu". This is one of the ways time is spent at on New Year's Eve, thorough until the new year. in.

During the first 3~6 days in beginning of the new year, many people get relax_ed with their friends or families. Moreover, they visit a shrine for to pray ing to god. This is called Hatumoude. Some of them enjoy drinking all day because this is the new year's holiday.

Do you spend the time like this? Are there any different points you could say? I'm curious about it.

In America, we watch the New Year's Eve ball drop in Time's Square. Because America is in 5 time zones, they replay the ball dropping over and over again. If you are on the west coast, you get very sick of it. We also drink quite a lot here. In the US New Year's Eve is a much smaller holiday than in Japan so some people ignore it completely. 

I enjoyed reading about New Year's Eve in Japan, thank you.