Looking for the perfect way to kill some time between dinner and the champagne this New Year's Eve? Bring out the popcorn and the television listings, or check your local bookstore or video kiosk. Chances are you'll find a New Year's book or film guaranteed to tug at your heartstrings and remind you of how magical a snowy Russian night can be.


Take the New Year's Eve adventure of Zhenya Lukashin, hero of the Soviet film "Ironiya Sudby" ("The Irony of Fate"). After a rip-roaring New Year's Eve party with his buddies in a Moscow bath house, Zhenya, played by Andrei Myagkov, wakes up in his own bed, in his own apartment, surrounded by his own furniture, next to his very own New Year's tree. Or so it seems.


According to the beautiful Nadya -- portrayed by Polish actress Barbara Brylska -- who has just poured cold water over his head, Zhenya is indeed in Apartment 12, Building 25, Third Builders' Street -- but in Leningrad!


Produced during the Brezhnev years, "The Irony of Fate" pokes gentle fun at Soviet realities: rows of anonymous apartment buildings linked by interchangeable keys, chock-full of people living interchangeable lives. But the film is also an improbable, magical romance of the sort that could only happen on the most important holiday of the Soviet year: New Year's Day. Haunting songs from the poetry of Marina Tsvetayeva, Bella Akhmadulina, Yevgeny Yevtushenko and many others linger long after the closing credits have rolled away.


Much in the way that Americans associate classic films like Frank Capra's 1946 "It's a Wonderful Life" or George Seaton's 1947 "Miracle on 34th Street" with the Christmas holidays, several generations of Russians gather around the television on New Year's Eve to watch "The Irony of Fate," which celebrates its 20th anniversary this year. Mikhail Mikhailov, a linguist in his early 30s who works for a branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, knows the film almost by heart.


"Of course the film is full of great acting and great songs," Mikhailov explained. "But the most important thing is that it really captures the mood of New Year's, when miraculous things can happen."


On Dec. 31, 1994, Mikhailov watched along with everyone else as Russian television showed not only the film, but recent interviews with the film's stars and famous fans, including legendary singer Alla Pugachyova, whose voice provided much of the film's background music.


"The Irony of Fate" is only one of the popular films and works of literature associated with New Year's Eve in Russia. Viewers nostalgic for the 1950s may prefer "Karnavalnaya Noch" ("Carnival Night"), filmed during the Khrushchev "thaw" in Russian culture. The film chronicles the adventures of young scientific researchers who fight their boss to stage a carnival concert, only to have the boss try to steal the credit when the evening turns out successfully.


The perestroika generation also lays claim to one of the major Soviet New Year's films: "Charodei" ("Wizards"). Based on a tale by the famed Strugatsky Brothers, this fable for grown-ups is set in the mystical town of Kitezhgrad (the name comes from a Mongol legend about an island that sank into a lake).


There, in the Scientific Universal Institute of Unusual Services (the Russian acronym is NU-I-NU), an evil witch plots to destroy the wedding of the beautiful Alyona, scheduled to take place New Year's Eve. Vintage 1980s songs, magic wands, and a running joke about a visitor who cannot find his way out of the Institute are all part of the film's enchantment.


For those who prefer a good read, Russian literature is equally obliging when it comes to New Year's Eve. A common New Year's theme involves young girls practicing the folk magic of gadanya, or fortune-telling. The most famous literary depiction of gadanya remains Vasily Zhukovsky's 1812 ballad "Svetlana," set not on New Year's Eve, but on the Eve of Epiphany, another auspicious night for fortune-telling. In "Svetlana," the heroine's preoccupation with gadanya leads to a dreadful dream of sin and death. "Svetlana" was written as a wedding present for Zhukovsky's niece Alexandra Protasova, so everything comes out all right in the end.


In Pushkin's "Yevgeny Onegin," Tatyana Larina also tries her hand at holiday fortune-telling, although she is mindful not to repeat Svetlana's mistakes. Pushkin also used stanzas from "Svetlana" as the epigraph for "The Snow Storm," a story of love and capricious fate set in the winter holidays of 1811-1812.


Even Tolstoy's heroine Natasha Rostova tries to predict the future through gadanya in "War and Peace." For those interested in trying Russian-style fortune-telling first hand, M. Zabylin's "Russky Narod," first printed in 1880 and reissued in 1990 by the Soviet-Canadian firm "Kniga Printshop," contains an exhaustive catalog of variations on this Russian folk tradition.


Nikolai Nekrasov's 1851 poem "New Year" develops an entirely different theme: the smashing of youthful illusions under the remorseless wheel of fortune. Referring to the previous year -- a period of repression under Emperor Nicholas I -- Nekrasov wrote, "In it, one dream or another/ Was killed ever day/ It showed mercy to none/ And gave people nothing."


Still, for Nekrasov, hope springs eternal: "With cup in hand/ Let us meet our guest [the New Year]/ And let grief be ground into dust ..." Nikolai Chernyshevsky cited lines from Nekrasov's "New Year" in his famous "What Is to Be Done?" as prophetic of a better future for Russia.


Russia's 20th-century poets produced some of their finest verse to mark the New Year. Alexander Blok's 1901 "New Year's Night" revisits Svetlana, still lost in her magic dream. Anna Akhmatova's epic "Poem Without a Hero" describes events on New Year's Eve 1913, just before war and revolution changed Russia forever.


Osip Mandelstam's "January 1, 1924," written as Lenin lay dying -- on the day of the funeral, Moscow's temperature plunged to the minus 40-degree Celsius range -- takes a sober look at the young Russian Revolution. In two 1922 New Year's poems dedicated to her husband, who had fled Russia for Prague, Marina Tsvetayeva reaffirms her faith in and love for Russia.


Incurable romantics might also want to check out Vladislav Khodasevich's 1909 "New Year," in which the hero asks his love, "Who is happier than me today?/ Who more modestly jokes about fate?/ What New Year's fairy tale/ Is more wonderful than this singular tale -- of you?"


It's a sentiment familiar to fans of those ageless celluloid lovers, Zhenya and Nadya of "The Irony of Fate," and one that's guaranteed to warm up a frosty New Year's Eve.