Pretty soon I’ll be stripping down to my bathing suit, screaming really loud and plunging into the freezing Atlantic Ocean for a (very) quick swim. Happy New Year!

It’s a ritual I’ve only recently started partaking in, but it’s been happening on this continent since at least 1903––when the the Coney Island Polar Bears were formed. The regular Bears are a small (20 people or so) contingent of devotees who swim nearly every Sunday from November to April in the icy waters next to Astroland, home of the Cyclone and Tilt-a-Whirl. Every New Year’s day, the amateurs join them––last January 1st 700 people swam while 6000 people (chickens!) watched.

Bears say the cold water does everything from improve circulation to fend off colds––some even roll around on the snowy beach before they get wet. The idea of swimming in cold water as panacea is nothing new. Russian immigrants who missed their plunging days of yore started the Coney Island Polar Bears. And Scandinavians have been at it for centuries. If you’re far from Alvy Singer’s home (under the Cyclone, of course), according to Columbia News Service, you have options: you can join swimmers New Year’s day in Long Lake, Wisconsin, where 65 people dive in after cutting through 18-inch-thick ice with a chain saw, or in Vancouver, British Columbia, you can jump in with 1,600 cold-water maniacs.

Though the health benefits are debated and somewhat offset by risks of hypothermia and nerve damage, it does feel amazingly invigorating and enlivening––the perfect note to hit for a new year. And for some, it’s in the blood; my great-grandmother, a Russian immigrant to Brooklyn herself, splashed with the Bears well into her 80s.