The wild blueberry ball will be dropped from the steeple of Kennebunk Unitarian Universalist Church at 9 p.m. and at midnight New Year’s Eve. Skating is scheduled at Waterhouse Center, just down the street. Courtesy photo

KENNEBUNK – It will be just like old times at 9 p.m. and midnight on Dec 31, when the wild blueberry ball drops from the steeple of the Unitarian Universalist Church on Main Street in Kennebunk.

It will be the seventh year for the drop. Last year’s wild blueberry drop was a virtual event, broadcast on YouTube.

And while there will be no indoor games this year, due to the pandemic, skaters are invited to make their way to Waterhouse Center, just down the street, lace up their skates and glide around the ice.

An early-bird wild blueberry ball drop is scheduled for 9 p.m. The drop will be repeated at midnight, ringing in 2022.

New York’s Times Square may feature a 12-foot diameter, 11,875-pound geodesic sphere sporting 2,688 Waterford crystal triangles, according to timessquarenyc.org., but Kennebunk has the blueberry – a wild one at that – a nod, perhaps, to the blueberry plains off Route 99.

In a video from the 2020 event, the Rev. Lara Campbell of Kennebunk Unitarian Universalist Church, a host of the event, explained the origin of the berry that is gently lowered from the church steeple. “The blueberry consists of about 1,000 LED lights, and is actually a repurposed lawn ornament,” she said as participants joined in the countdown.