BY DESIGN : Glassy Eyed

Ting. That beautiful sound of crystal glasses clinking a toast is the treble note of New Year’s Eve.

Graceful, attenuated champagne flutes--our customary vessels of good cheer--are the soigne evolution of human skulls. Before time was parceled out in chunks of 365 days, our ancestors were drinking to the ill health of the enemies out of their enemies’ craniums.

Time passed, customes canged and now we raise our glasses on high and shout, “Here’s mud in your eye!” Not quite as barbaric, but you can see the lineage.

The American way to ring in the new year is with champagne glasses filled with bubbly brew, toasts and kisses all around. Although socially more acceptable our reformed custom still has some pitfalls.

Proper champagne glasses, designed to prolong effervescence, are the supermodels of the crystal family--tall and svelte. For the past several years a trend toward extremely narrow goblets excluded all but those with Gidget-size noses. Now, designers are fiddling with the stems, adding color, shapes and gold leaf. Artist and designer Jennifer Bartlett whacked the stems off her glasses entirely, resting her tall goblets on a filigreed foot.

Crystal champagne glasses can range in price from less than $20 to more than $100 a stem. Waterford, the high-end Irish crystal company owned by Wedgewood and based in Wall, N.J., recently introduced less expensive Marquis patterns. A glass in the secondary line is from $29 to $39.50, and Waterford starts at $40 and goes up to $98.

The kissing portion of the ritual is easy. It’s the toast that’s tough. Ask anyone who has ever been called upon to deliver one unexpectedly. Here are a few for the occasion:

As we start the New Year, Let’s get down on our knees to thank God we’re on our feet. May the best of this year be the worst of next. Whatever you resolve to do, On any New Year’s Day, Resolve to thineself be true And live the same old way. Here’s Champagne to our real friends and real pain to our sham friends. In Spain, as the clock begins to strike midnight, people eat one grape for every stroke of the bell in hopes of having good luck each month of the new year. Then, the quickly consumed grapes are aided in their esophageal journey with copious amounts of wine.

While Spaniards are gagging on grapes, the Welsh are dashing about the house opening the back door at the stroke of midnight to release the old year and quickly locking it, then sprinting to open the front door by the last stroke of the hour to welcome the new year.

In Russia, Grandfather Frost--a white-bearded guy in a red suit with fur trim--dispenses gifts to children on New Year’s Eve. This helps his more familiar alter ego cover the rest of the world on Christmas Eve, since he doesn’t have to fly to Russia until a week later. Nigerians like to wreak a little havoc on New Year’s Eve. At the stroke of midnight, they begin firing guns, shooting flaming arrows, scattering smoldering wood and shouting away the bad luck and evils of the old year. Then, on New Year’s Day, masked dancers clear the streets of debris from the night before.

Now, if we could only get the Rose Bowl parade attendees to march through the house and pick up all the empty champagne glasses, we, too, would have a winning New Year’s Day ritual.