GRID-WIDE - Second Life Winter Festival-goers enjoyed Santa sleigh rides, a tour of lights, and skating in Kissling Saturday. A live Santa and elf greeted visitors from inside a life-sized snow globe. Snowy sidewalks and frozen ponds created multiple skating arenas. The festivities in Kissling lasted two hours and attracted about 20 people, with many coming and going.

The next stop, Saturday, in the Winter Festival was an hour-long fruitcake pass hosted by Rifkin Habsburg, owner of the Frootcake Diner in Arcadia 2. Frootcake is a betting game of strategy designed by Habsburg, who also programs games for his SL company Procyon Games.

"Fruitcakes. Nobody likes them, so everyone passes them on to the next person,” read the game’s instructions. For the Winter Festival, entry fees were waved and $L paid to the winners. Frootcake is played as a tournament regularly at the Frootcake Diner, so you can still hop over to give Frootcake a try.

These events were just two of the activities in the Third-Annual Winter Festival, which kicked off Friday and is supported by the Lindens each year. Nearly 24 events, some on-going, are listed to take place during the eight day festival, from Dec. 15 until Dec. 22. A schedule of events is found at the official SL blog. All events are free to residents.

This is the first year the festival has not been centrally located. And it is also the first year LL has not hosted sims for a Winter Expostion. As a solution, SL resident Forseti Svarog of the Electric Sheep Company designed a HUD for festival goers. A HUD is a controller that attaches to the user interface. This HUD, called a tour HUD, was originally created for another ESC client and was modified to take SL users to all the various locations of the Winter Festival events.

"The Winter Festival is my favorite time of the year in SL, and when I heard from Jeska (Linden) they might not centralize in Zermatt this year I wanted to help," said Svarog. The HUDs can be found at the Chalet Linden in Wengen.

The day before the conclusion of the festival, Dec. 21, will feature a long-time favorite event among residents. A grid-wide snowball fight will give residents a chance to throw snowballs at the Lindens anywhere in-world for the duration of the day.