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Gaia's bombarding us with items left and right this xmas 2k11. And they're also very varied.

An item list for all of the xmas items: www.gaiaonline.com/forum/gaia-communithttp://www.gaiaonline.com/journal/#y-discussion/t.76591191/

12 Days of Xmas
Starting 12/14/11, a lamppost appeared in the header. Gaians can click it once each day to receive a new advent item.
It's been hinted that users will be able to exchange all 12 items for some other 13th item. Users assume that this means that it will possibly be an alchemy exchange.
Mistletoe Headband ( Day 12 ) {Adorably simple}
Sugarplum Jingle Brooch ( Day 11 ) {Well received}
Gifted Giftwrap Hat ( Day 10 ) {Well received}
Frosted Holiday Cake ( Day 9 ) {Also well received}
Steaming Mug of Cocoa ( Day 8 ) {Large complaint that it's a housing item that's not equippable. There was a recent housing interface update so this must be a way of gaia trying to remind users to use their houses.}
Perfect Present ( Day 7 ) {Overwhelmingly great reception}
Rocky Ranger BB Gun ( Day 6 ) {Confusion as to why we got a gun, but many users were elated by the A Christmas Story reference.}
Sugarplum Jingle Hairpin ( Day 5 ) {Great anger over it being a duplicate of the brooch. Too much anger over a free item.}
Summon Gingerbread Fluff ( Day 4 ) {Many users overjoyed by such a unique gift. Others stayed rather neutral over the gift, even though they have no desire to play zOMG}
Gilded Sleigh Skates (Day 3) {Well received}

zOMG
As of 12/22/11, there is no holiday festivities in zOMG yet. However on 12/20, swarf made the following comment:
"The zOMG servers were offline briefly for a small update. This should hopefully fix a rare crash that we saw last week a couple times as well update the servers in preparation for a Christmas item to be released later this week."

Caroling
There are 7 caroling items total. They're red/white/yellow in color scheme. You can only collect one set from caroling in the shops. You can also collect one set from caroling in Towns. I'm sure there will still be an influx of these items, but we weren't capped in the past.
After singing 19 times in the shops, you can go locate Santa to receive one item. Santa is located on the world map. (jack was back on the map again this year too) Locating Santa annoyed me at first, but the thread makes it much more streamlined.
Spirited 2k11 Caroling Cap
Spirited 2k11 Merry Mittens
Spirited 2k11 Puffy Shirt
Spirited 2k11 Puffy Pants
Spirited 2k11 Merry Boots
Spirited 2k11 Candy Cane Capelet
Spirited 2k11 Candy Cane Lantern

Christmas CS Evolving Item
There's usually an xmas-themed EI. Users were beginning to doubt Gaia as days passed without one being released. On Sunday, Dec 18th, a special animated item left users wondering if that was their xmas EI. According to Gaia's FB post, it's Gaia's first animated EI. [annoucement]
It's a small cream giftbox with a silver ribbon that sits at the feet of avatars. It must be equipped in animated form and left on the avatar for it to "evolve." People are allowed to change their avatars, but they must always have it equipped. If unequipped, the item must start the "evolving" process all over again. Once the item is done evolving, it will stay that way and users may equip and unequip at will.
As of 12/22, the gift had its first evolution. It jumps higher and shakes more. Thing is, the stage of evolution that people see on all avatars is the evolutionary stage that their gift is on. People with a second-stage-gift see gifts bouncing at the 2nd stage all over the forums. And I only still see the first stage because i do not own a Silver Bells EI.

Staff Ornaments
On 12/19, users found that there were item grants hidden in profiles of 31 of the Gaia staff. Each of the ornaments gave clues in the form of a word scramble that was unscrambled to find the link of the 32nd ornament. The ornaments are housing items.

Xmas Event
[announcement]
The Xmas event started on 12/22. It's a gold sink event. This event is very fair, as far as gold sinks go. The overall progress bar is community-based. It'll progress as the community bands together and donates enough gold and items to Pete. The bar is progressing much slower than I thought it would. This means that the bar is either huuuuge or there's just not enough enthusiasm over this part of the event. There was definitely more excitement in the air over the storyline where people were chucking gold and items into Sen and Overseer's airship furnace. The whole event is just people donating items/gold to Pete. There's no other action aside from repetitively donating one item or sum of gold at a time.

As the bar progresses to each new story, we'll receive item grants.
Grant #1: Xmas 2k11 Event Ol' Pete's Sweater (Rina's section)
If you've missed any grants while offline, you can always click the storyline(s) you've missed to see the item grant button for that stage.

As you're donating to the overall progress of the bar, you get alchemy components. There are eight different alchemy components total.
Donating gold gets you a random chance at earning a random alchemy component for each donation. The amount does not matter. One gold gives you the same chance as 10k gold.
A more reliable method (in my experience) is donating items. You receive one random alchemy component for every 10 items donated. So you get one item for the 10th, another for the 20th, another for the 30th donated item, and so on. The value of the item doesn't matter, so use cheap items like the starter sets.

The alchemy components are used to make "Gary's Island Adventure" EI. This is a reference to an old EI report from back when Timmy met Old Pete where Pete started announcing an EI that didn't exist (at the time). [old announcement]
The formula can be bought from the [Treehouse] for 12 stickers. Formulas can be crafted in the [Bifrost] once you have all of the materials. You'll need 10 of each of the 8 components (that's 80 total).