Brendon Thorne / Getty Images
From Sydney to Siberia, revelers prepare to celebrate the dawn of a new year.
By NBC News staff and wire reports
Updated at 8:05 a.m. ET:?As if Christmas Island didn't already have an edge on one of the major holidays, it jumped into the future at 5 a.m. ET on Monday, becoming, along with Kiribati and Samoa, the first populated place to reach 2013.?
More populous areas, including New Zealand, started a new calendar just an hour later, joined by Fiji and Tonga. And then the properly big parties started, with the new year reaching Australia at 8 a.m. ET.
Meanwhile, Scotland was already a day into the revelry.?International datelines hadn't been surreptitiously changed. Scotland was celebrating the annual festival known as Hogmanay, which kicked off Sunday night with thousands of torchbearers marching in Edinburgh to bid farewell to 2012 in a celebration drawing inspiration from pagan traditions. The Scotsman newspaper estimated that 7,000 people participated in the "river of fire" through the city center.
David Moir / Reuters
Up Helly Aa vikings from the Shetland Islands march in the torchlight procession to mark the start of Hogmanay (New Year) celebrations in Edinburgh on Dec. 30.
The evening of celebration was just the start of a fete lasting until Wednesday and expected to draw 80,000 revelers from around the world, according to the official Hogmanay website.?
But of course, the party is a little bigger thousands of miles to the east. In Sydney, eager revelers camped Sunday night on the shores of the harbor -- the first wave of an estimated 1.5 million people expected to watch a fireworks display centered on the Sydney Harbor Bridge.
Another 2 million Australians, out of a population of 22 million, were expected to watch the show?on television,?Sydney's Lord Mayor Clover Moore told reporters. ?Entertainment for millions doesn't come cheap -- the extravaganza headlined by pop singer?Kylie Minogue?carried a?price tag?of $6.9 million.?
Cheryl Ravelo / Reuters
Bread shaped like roasted pigs, locally known as "lechon," is sold at a bakery in Manila on Monday. Lechon is a popular New Year delicacy in the Philippines.
"This is really putting Australia on the map in terms of welcoming people to the new year," Moore said at the harbor before the event.?
PhotoBlog: Early fireworks in Sydney
Elsewhere?in Asia, the?buoyant economies?of the Asia-Pacific region were prepared to party with renewed optimism despite the so-called fiscal cliff threatening to reverberate globally from the United States and the tattered economies of Europe.
In Hong Kong, this year's $1.6-million fireworks display was being billed by organizers as the biggest ever in the southern Chinese city. Police expected as many as 100,000 people to watch, local news reports said.?
Increasingly democratic Myanmar was planning a public countdown for the first time, and Jakarta preparing a huge street party befitting Indonesia's powering economy.
Mariana Bazo / Reuters
We may have different calendars, customs and beliefs, but most of us mark the arrival of a new year. Take a look at the ways cultures around the world celebrate and bring good luck for the year ahead.
In a field in Myanmar's largest city, Yangon, workers tested a giant digital countdown screen early on Monday against a backdrop of the revered Shwedagon pagoda.
The celebration was set to be the first public New Year's countdown in Myanmar, a country ruled for almost five decades by military regimes that discouraged or banned big public gatherings.
The Associated Press and NBC News' John Newland contributed to this report.
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