Want to participate in an old local New Year's Day tradition that doesn't involve freezing your butt off in Lake Michigan? Sometime on Jan. 1, take a poke at somebody. Fisticuffs were a staple on the first day of the new year - "Boxing Day" in Milwaukee - for much of the front half of the 20th century. Other major U.S. cities had New Year's Day boxing in the early 1900s, but only in Milwaukee did it become such an ongoing and popular tradition.