The square is crowded with revelers, many holding noisemakers and wearing funny hats.

A band plays.

In less than a minute, a glittering ball drops to the ground and the crowd cheers for a new year.

But this wasn't Times Square in New York City or First Night in Pittsburgh. And it wasn't even midnight -- at least not here.

Harmony Borough rolled out a different type of New Year's Eve celebration Monday. The Silvester celebration marked the new year in Germany in honor of the town's German founders. So, when people in Germany rang in 2008 -- at 6 p.m. Eastern Standard Time -- so did the folks in Harmony.

A German band, Die Lustigen Musikamten, and German New Year's Eve activities such as Bleigiessen, lead drop fortune-telling, kept with the theme.

"The music is as authentic as you can get on this side of the Atlantic," said Harry Webb, of Cranberry, who lived in Germany for 2 1/2 years. "The music itself reminds me of being over there."

Marta Finley, of Cranberry, who has vacationed in Germany, said the celebration had a "European flavor."

That's what organizers were hoping for. The idea germinated as town leaders brainstormed ways to draw more attention to the historic borough, said council President Jeff Smith.

"A couple of us were sitting around talking about what we could do. We have our summer concert, and we were talking about doing something to draw more attention to the shops," he said.

A New Year's Eve celebration was suggested, but Mr. Smith said, "We're getting too old to stay up that late.

"First, we thought we'd do something on Greenland time, so we'd be done by 10. Then, somebody said, 'This is a German town.'"

So, the organizers decided to have a celebration on German time, which is six hours ahead of Pittsburgh.

"It's a niche that nobody ever discovered," he said. "We didn't want to compete with Pittsburgh or even Mars, for that matter."

An afternoon event would draw families, he said.

"For most people, the idea of taking 5 and 6 year olds out at night wasn't fun," he said. "The kids don't care. They get to see the fireworks and see neat stuff. What do they care that it is six hours early?"

Indeed, the celebration was packed with families, many pushing strollers.

"We're here with four little ones. They're having a blast," said Kathleen Sinan, of Cranberry. "It's nice to come out and enjoy a few hours, then go home and enjoy the rest of the evening."

The event began at 2 p.m. with the first Harmony Silvester 5K Run, which was a surprising success, Mr. Smith said, with more than 200 runners participating in the race through town.

"For the first year of a 5K race, if you get 50 people to show up, that's pretty good," he said.

The band began playing at 3:30 p.m. on the front porch of the historic Harmony Inn. The Harmony Museum and many of the shops were open, and people milled around, having refreshments, talking with other revelers and listening to the music.

Doris Kelly, a lifelong Harmony resident, captured all the activity with her video camera.

"I have family out of town," she said. "A lot of times, they come home and they want to look at hometown stuff."

Mrs. Kelly said she still lives in the house she grew up in, and "my father's family was one of the first five families in town."

One of the sights on Mrs. Kelly's video was Robb Maglietta raising the New Year's ball. Mr. Maglietta, a fabricator with Sign Innovation, a Harmony business, made the ball in eight hours. The ball, 2 feet in diameter, was made of quarter-inch steel wire containing 650 lights. Inside, a 12-inch disco ball spun.

It was hung from a crane 65 feet in the air, higher than any of the buildings in Harmony.

Beginning at 5:30 p.m., Mr. Smith read a letter from Hans-Jurgen Heimsoeth, the consul general of Germany, congratulating Harmony on its German roots. A CD was played that contained music sent by the archivist for the Duke of Wurttenberg, the area of Germany where the founders of Harmony came from.

Then, Mr. Smith taught the crowd how to count from 10 to one in German. With 10 minutes to go, glow sticks were handed out to the children. At 5:59, the ball began to drop, and those who could count in German participated in the countdown.

After the ball dropped, a fireworks went off in a display sponsored by Armstrong Cable.

Drawing several hundred participants, the event achieved what organizers hoped: It brought people to the small, historic borough.

"We're a little town. There's hundreds of them in Western Pennsylvania," Mr. Smith said. "If we can do something that we can get people to come and see it ... it's our way of trying to attract residents and businesses."