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Ah, New Year's Day in Tacoma. Layering of woolens, drabbest down or brightest fleece begin to muffle forms and features. The back of the closet comes to the front; here's the Siberian yakwear. Gortex crests featureless bulk.

With temps hovering in the hi-30s and lo-40s, automobiles splash toward Point Defiance Park. The dude on the Schwinn pedals furiously down Pearl Street toward the zoo. What do intricate piercings feel like in the cold?

There's a crowd at the Point Defiance Marina. Everyone grips towels. Look! There's a frosted cueball, vanity tempting hypothermic harm. A bald man goes hatless. It's silly here.

Youngsters are separated from families at 11:30 a.m. A few are dressed as Batman. There's a Nina Turtle. A grown-up gives a speech. The youngsters cheer and run into the icy cold Commencement Bay. A mom stands in front of blue-colored children like Mary Tyler Moore after she's tossed her tam-o'-shanter. Look upward, she's lost her scarf, it's caught in the cold wind, the scarf flies, dervishing aloft on the updraft, higher still, unfettered ribbon above that neck, beyond reach, a second or three from its watery fate in front of the Tacoma Yacht Club.

The kids run toward shore screaming. One Batman is crying. The Ninja Turtle lost his shell. The children are rewarded with clothing, food and pats on the heads.

Teens and grown-ups inch toward the water. Surprising, there's another Batman. Mr. Speechmaker is back. The clock strike noon and it's into the water for these loons. A few turn back. Most turn blue. Spectators cheer.

Afterward, hot drinks are consumed in tents with heaters.

See you there.

[Point Defiance Marina, Polar Bear Plunge, Sunday, Jan. 1, 11:30 a.m., free, 5912 N. Waterfront Dr., Point Defiance Park, Tacoma, 253.591.5325]

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There are many differences between the New Year's celebrations of New York City and Tacoma, the most telling of which is the trajectory of each ball. In New York, the ball drops - another year down the tubes. In Tacoma, however, the ball is set on fire.           

"We're really stepping up the fire aspect to mitigate the cold," First Night Tacoma co-producer Lance Kagey told the Weekly Volcano. "Last year, we had Zen fire gardens, which are very cool basins filled with black sand. You can draw in them with sticks and fire traces your drawing. We'll have those again. We'll have some fires to gather around for warmth. We have a big fire spectacular at the end of the night, and lots of fire performers throughout the evening."

As in years past a parade kicks off Tacoma's First Night 2012 nighttimeNew Year's Eve celebration in downtown Tacoma. And this year isn't any different. Beginning at 6:30 p.m. the "World's Shortest Parade" will march from the Graffiti Garages to the Theatre on the Square featuring representatives from the Dockyard Derby Dames, fire dancers, Metro Arts Dragon team and many more.

Of course, the World's Shortest Parade is only a beginning. A First Night Tacoma button will allow you access to 20 different stages and the museums, offering a wide variety of entertainment options. The annual, all-ages, family-friendly, alcohol-free New Year's Eve celebration follows the Chinese lunar calendar, and this year is the year of the dragon. In this spirit there will be two large dragons making an appearance at the festival - a 35-foot creation by Metro Parks Tacoma, and a 14-foot fire-breathing metal beast.

The entertainment schedule for the night blows my mind. Check out the schedule here.

First Night Buttons are only $10 before the festival begins. The buttons make the perfect gift. Click here to discover where you can grab one or 20.

So if you're just glad 2011 is over, stay at home and join Carson Daly and Justin Bieber in Times Square as they watch the ball drop. If you're excited to get started with 2012, head to downtown Tacoma, where the ball, and spirits, will be on fire.

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There are some hobbies better kept to yourself. You know, the ones you do alone in your castle late at night. And then there are some truly cool hobbies, like model railroads. These should be celebrated and dragged out in the open for all to admire. Which is why the 16th Annual Model Train Festival, downtown Tacoma's biggest model railroad exposition (taking into account, of course, the relatively small size of the subjects at hand because they are, of course, models), is being held Dec. 26-Jan. 1, instead of like, a half-hour. This gives you plenty of time to enjoy every floor of the Washington State History Museum filled with operating modular layouts.

These local clubs are providing model train layouts: 4D PNR HO Modular Group, 4D NTRAK Group, Mount Rainier N-Scale, Pierce County Lionel Club, Tacoma Northwestern Model Railroad Club, and Boeing Employees Model Railroad Club. Plus, the Puget Sound Model Railroad Engineers will be on hand to operate their masterpiece-the largest permanent model railroad layout in the state. Washington Operation Lifesaver, a program dedicated to preventing and reducing accidents at highway-rail grade crossings, will have an information booth set up at the event.

But remember to look both ways before crossing, and keep your pennies to yourself. 

[Washington State History Museum, Monday, Dec. 26-Jan. 1, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. $6-$8, 1911 Pacific Ave., Tacoma, 253.272. 9747]

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Whoa. Stop, take a deep breath, and put down the biscotti you've just sharpened into a stake. You are not alone. There is help. There is GRINCH.

Great Resources In Nourishing Calming Holidays was established in 1976, when a Pres. Gerald Ford loyalist found he was simply unable to squeeze out any seasonal goodwill; empty-handed on Christmas Eve, he made the nimrod decision to set the Christmas tree on fire instead of admitting that he hadn't done any shopping. His ex-wife, homeless, with the divorce settlement she received in early 1977, went on to found GRINCH, determined that no one else's Christmas should go up in smoke.

Though there are no official GRINCH chapters in the South Sound, Santa found a copy of THE GRINCH 13-Step Guide to Getting in the Spirit in Yukon Cornelius's Silver and Gold Market. And there it was. Number 9: "Embrace the Winter Solstice by covering your house in suns and moons and swath the lintels with fir boughs because they smell good and will relive stress through atmospheric control." It also said to shed your clothes and run around naked in the hedges made of brambles and white thorne.

It works, except the naked thing. The fragrance washes away the frosted glassy shiny tinselly stress.

If you want to take Number 9 to the next level, attend the annual Tacoma Winter Solstice and Candle Shriving Celebration Wednesday, Dec. 21 at the Mandolin Café. Open to the public, Goddess Chiara Wood will help bring you to center, wash away the bad and look toward the positive – then feed the hell out of you with a righteous four-course dinner and live music by Paddy Coyne's Irish Session Band.

Santa suggests your partake in the naked thing on your own property.

[The Mandolin Café, Winter Solstice and Candle Shriving Celebration, Wednesday, Dec. 21, 6-9 p.m., 18+, $25 advance tickets at brownpapertickets.com, 3923 S. 12^th St., Tacoma, 253.761.3482, themandolincafe.com]

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There's nothing worse than awakening from a long winter's nap, rolling out of bed and discovering it's Christmas morning - and not a creature is stirring whiskey into his coffee. But you'd better not cry, and you don't need to pout, because if you plan ahead you'll get your jollies.

All state-run liquor stores will be open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Christmas Eve, Dec. 24. State liquor stores will be closed on Christmas Day, Dec. 25.

Pierce Transit will operate Sunday level of services Christmas Day and Monday, Dec. 26.

After you work your way through the Christmas tree, you can ditch the Claus-induced calories and that extra side of grits at the Franciscan Polar Plaza, which is open Christmas Eve from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. and Christmas Day from noon to 6 p.m. The 40 by 100 square feet of ice is sure to be full of skate crews demonstrating their mad skillz and test-driving their recently unwrapped winter garb.

As the sun starts to sink on Christmas, prepare yourself for an untamed night at ZooLights Tacoma, where thousands of twinkling, animated light sculptures illuminate the nocturnal paths of the animal kingdom. Peddlers offer hot cocoa, while you ride the carousel or camels. ZooLights will not be open Christmas Eve.

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You've spent the past month running around as hyper as Brooke Mueller trying to finish your holiday preparations. Santa thinks it's high time (sorry, Brooke) you do a little something for yourself.

Here's the plan:

Load the iPod with Vince Guaraldi tunes from A Charlie Brown Christmas, lace up your skates, and hit the Franciscan Polar Plaza. Because it's covered you should be able to replicate the moves of Dorothy Hamill in nothing but a Polar fleece vest.

There are a bunch of holiday events happening today in the South Sound, including Dance Theatre Northwest's Nutcracker, a free screening of Elf at The Grand Cinema and The Christmas Revels at the Rialto Theater. Click here for more events going down today.

Feel a little ragged? Pamper yourself today. Click here for a few ideas.

And if you still haven't finished your shopping, click here for local gift ideas.

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By the time Santa was 6, my mother had already figured out I was a little too chubby and clumsy to be in the ballet, but when I decided I wanted to be an ice skater, she didn't have the heart to tell me that might not be the best fit, either. For four years, I donned brightly colored leotards and caught the sleigh to the local hockey rink, where I failed miserably at learning the simplest turns and spins. All I really wanted to do was skate.

As I have mention before, the Tacoma Art Museum and Franciscan Health Systems have erected an outdoor ice-skating rink across the street from TAM for those who just want to skate. 

And today's the perfect day to try it out. Not only is the rink open from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., and the neighboring Two Five Trees tree lot open, AND the European-style outdoor holiday market bustles in front of TAM, but a free community festival will consume the museum, too.

Sugar and spice and everything free is Santa song of today's Let It Snow community festival, a merry, merry tradition that's ho-ho-hosted every year by the Tacoma Art Museum. The free community event lights up at 10 a.m. and includes dance performances by Metro Arts and Grant Elementary, festive music from the Rainier Ringers and portraits in spoken word and image from 20 local presenters. While the entertainment fills the main floor, free craft projects will be offered upstairs. Create a pop-up holiday card for family and friends or an ornament to hang on our community tree in Tollefson Plaza.

Everything the Tacoma Art Museum envisioned this holiday season comes to fruition today.

[Tacoma Art Museum, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., free, ice skating $7-$8, 1701 Pacific Ave., Tacoma, 253.272.4258]

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Some groups still celebrate the true meaning of Christmas.

The University of Puget Sound offers its students and faculty, along with the community, an opportunity to prepare for the holiday with a night of song and Scripture.

The Festival of Lessons and Carols is the University of Puget Sound's gift, Dec. 4 at 7 p.m. at the Kilworth Memorial Chapel on the north end of the campus along North 18th between Union Avenue and Lawrence Street.

I've attended several of these, hiding in the back. It's always a packed house. Everyone sings carols and lights candles as a symbol of hope for the season. it's pretty cool.

If my calculations are correct this is the 29th year the university has presented this program. The first year, the choir director had the choir lead students in carol singing before finals took place. The next year, they modeled the format from the King's College Choir at Cambridge University in England.

This year University Chaplain Dave Wright (1996 represent) will lead a Christmas service that was developed in 1918 at King's College, University of Cambridge, England.

Besides audience participation in carol singing, the University's Adelphian Concert Choir and Voci d'Amici will perform. The event will be a candlelit service.

The event is free and open to the public; however, the university will be collecting non-perishable food items for St. Leo's Food Connection.

[Kilworth Chapel, Sunday, Dec. 4, 7-8:30 p.m., free, North 18th and Warner Street, Tacoma, 253.879.3100]

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SANTA SAYS >>>>

Although it is de rigueur to deplore the commercialism of Christmas, the holiday, almost by definition, is a celebration of industrialist, capitalist society. Sometime in the mid-A.D.s (that's after the B.C.s), Europeans combined their pagan and newly Christian traditions together in a half-assed sort of way and Christmas was born, albeit a Christmas that would be unrecognizable to many today.

It did OK, as holidays go, but the Protestant movement squelched any momentum it had in its youth.

The heretical holiday remained fairly unpopular through the mid-1800s (apparently, Dec. 25 was just another workday), but the Victorians brought it back (and changed it forever). Dickens put the kibosh on the naysayers with A Christmas Carol. And Prince Albert, as Zadie Smith notes in her book The Autograph Man, charmed all of America with the Christmas tree, a tradition from his native Germany.

Blossoming, as it was, in the midst of the Industrial Revolution, Christmas couldn't help but become the show of wealth, prosperity, and thingery that it is today.

Oh, I might have had something to do with the whole Christmas gift-giving thing, too.

Anyhoo, children of all ages should check out Victorian Country Christmas beginning Wednesday - the holiday madness started with them. History comes alive as you tour the lavishly decorated old-fashioned storefronts, listen to carolers, ride in carriages, Santa Tram and the Christmas Carousel, and chow on home-style cooking.

[Puyallup Fairgrounds, Wednesday, Nov. 30-Saturday, Dec. 3 10 a.m. to 9 p.m., Sunday, Dec. 4 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., $8-$10, free parking, Ninth and Meridian, Puyallup, website]

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SANTA SAYS >>>>

If you're one of those people who lock themselves in the bathroom when you go to elf parties so you can go through their medicine cabinets, the Holiday Tour of Historic Homes is the ideal way to indulge your voyeuristic habit. You get the fix of going through another person's house, with none of the actual risk or guilt involved.

Nine or 10 historic properties in the south capitol, southeast and northeast areas of Olympia - decorated for the season - will be open Sunday, Dec 4 for you to tour, all of them, memorize their floor plans to your little heart's content.

The time has come to live the dream.

Also, the time has come to support the non-profit Bigelow House Museum. The full $15 admission price goes toward the museum. Tickets include a map will be available beginning Friday, Nov. 24 at downtown Olympia businesses Drees, Archibald Sisters, Popinjay and Thompson Furniture and Gift. Tickets will also be available at 11 a.m. Dec. 4 at the Bigelow House Museum and Washington State Capital Museum.

Snoopy people of the world, unite!

[Washington State Capital Museum home base, Sunday, Dec. 4, noon to 4 p.m., $15, 211 West 21st, Olympia, 360.753.1215]

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