CityVille Santa's Workshop: Everything you need to know

The holidays have officially arrived in CityVille, complete with a new collection feature that sees you collecting presents from friends over the next few weeks. This collection event takes place within Santa's Workshop, which is given to you for free as part of the "Save the Holidays" event. Santa's Workshop thankfully comes complete assembled - you'll be able to place it into your town and immediately go to work collecting presents.

From now until December 25, you'll be able to collect presents, and will in fact be required to if you want to finish goals in the Save the Holidays event (Act 1 alone requires you to have at least 50 presents). You can ask for these presents by heading inside your Workshop and clicking on the big "Ask for Presents" button which posts a general news item to your feed, or you can purchase the Presents outright in bundles for City Cash (5 presents for 50 City Cash, 10 presents for 100 City Cash and 20 presents for 200 City Cash - yes, they're that expensive).

Once you start collecting presents, you'll need to wait until Christmas Day - December 25 - to actually open them. You'll be able to win a variety of items, and while we don't know what will be included in the roundup of gifts, we do know that there will be at least 10 limited edition items available, including three rare items. It's possible that there will be some "filler" gifts like sidewalks and the like included as well, but either way, you'll want to collect as many gifts as possible within this time limit so that you have a great chance of receiving all 10 limited edition items among the many duplicates you'll also likely receive (just like last year).

So what are you waiting for? Start asking your friends for presents, and work on those Save the Holidays goals as well! Happy holidays!

Check out the rest of our Holiday 2011 coverage right here.

What do you think of this year's holiday collection event in CityVille? What sorts of items do you hope your in-game presents contain? Sound off in the comments.