I saw elsewhere (here) that the Winter festivities were going on until January 22nd, but here it says that it all ends on the 15th.  Which one's correct?

Ok, so they know about it... cool.  I don't mind using the Station Launcher, as long as I can get into the game.

By the way, I did a game update through the launcher and then tried jacking in normally and got the error code again.  Just use the launcher for now if you have this problem.