See What the New Year Has to Offer

With five days left until 2002, the heart of the holiday season is still beating strongly. Today is the second day of Christmas (gift: two turtle doves) and the second day (kujichagulia, or self-determination) of Kwanzaa, an African American cultural celebration. To follow the seven principles of Kwanzaa, check out www.swagga.com/kwanzaa.htm and www.melanet.com/kwanzaa.

As is tradition with New Year’s resolutions, you can make a list and break ‘em twice. On the Web, maybe you can keep your resolutions longer than you would in the real world.

List your plans at www.newyearsresolutions.com/random.cgi.

At www.how-to-keep-your-new-years-resolution.com, you’ll find some helpful hints on making this year a keeper.

If you need a nag, sign up for a resolution reminder service that will generate e-mails to you all year long. Oh joy. The monthly e-mails include tips and Web links for encouragement. The site, at www.hiaspire.com/newyear, offers support buddies too, should you need an anonymous nudge.

And don’t worry. Should you totally dump the resolution, you can cancel the service.

You can find more structure and help at MyGoals.com (www.mygoals.com). Heck, most resolutions don’t last a month, so you’ll do fine with the 30-day free trial of the site. (If you do, however, make it beyond that point, it’s about $10 a month.)

You can start the kids on this hamster-wheel tradition at blackdog4kids.com/holiday/newyear/resolve.

To explore New Year’s traditions, check out wilstar.com/holidays/newyear.htm. You can find out why folks eat certain foods, such as black-eyed peas and cabbage--although there is no mention of chitterlings. There is, however, a link to the lyrics of “Auld Lang Syne” in case your old acquaintances have forgotten.

Similarly, at www.theholidayspot.com/newyear, you can check out why the midnight cacophony is necessary. And you can find the right words to wish folks a happy New Year in 37 languages. It also has recipes and gift ideas.

For some resolutions, being a quitter is necessary. If you’re looking to kick nic (and we’re not talking about harming a Backstreet Boy), check out www.quitsmoking .com. There, beyond the product promotion, you’ll find articles and support. The site offers an online diary; you also can check out the diaries of nearly 2,500 other quitters.

If you don’t like to leave things to chance, you can get your full-year astrological forecast to see whether making resolutions is an exercise in futility. Check out www.astrology.com/2002. It will also give you your sun sign’s astrological New Year’s resolutions.

When schools reconvene after winter break, teachers can work the tradition of making resolutions into a writing assignment. Find an assignment idea at www.teachervision.com/lesson-plans/lesson-4136.html.

Parades and bowl games too are long-standing traditions. You can get the skinny on the games from espn.go.com/abcsports/bcs from stats to schedules.

The hometown hurrah offers its own site chock-full of tourist details. The Tournament of Roses Parade, themed “Good Times,” is at www.tournamentofroses.com.

The site offers information on decorating, the Royal Court, tickets for the parade and the football game and post-parade float viewing.

Because security is said to be much tighter this year, you might get better views from the HGTV Rose Parade Cam. Watch the floats being built in the last frantic days before the parade from different views via four Web cams set up in the Pasadena warehouse.

This year, the corresponding bowl game, the Rose Bowl, will be played two days later.

Also, find out about and listen to London’s New Year’s Day parade, called the biggest annual street parade in Europe, at www.londonparade.co.uk/parade.html.

And if you just want to welcome in the new year by sending good wishes, e-mail a card from greetings.yahoo.com/browse/holidays/new_year.

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Michelle Maltais is a multimedia producer at The Times. She can be reached at michelle.maltais@latimes.com.