From Christmas Markets to Holiday Tea: Diary of a Christmas Enthusiast in New York

Christmas is my favorite time to be in New York City.  I also think New York City is the best place to be for Christmas, but I may be a bit biased, seeing as I’ve never actually been anywhere else for Christmas.  Whether you live in NY, you’ve never been to NY for Christmas, or never been to NY at all, here’s a taste of holiday life alla NYC.
 
 
December 20^th

The Columbus Circle Christmas Market:  Across from Columbus Circle, on 59^th street, is a sea of red and white stalls decked with white lights.  I follow the smell of gingerbread to a stall boasting homemade gingerbread boys and girls, and a huge pot of apple cider.  Fighting the urge to buy a ginger kid, I keep walking and pass by a charcuterie where the vendor is putting out slices of salami on toothpicks for passersby to sample.  At another stall, a man is showing customers how to make soap.  The next stall boasts wine glasses painted with various colorful designs. 
 

Next Stop- Afternoon Tea at the Lowell Hotel: The tea room at this little hotel tucked away on 63^rd and Madison is the definition of quaint.  It makes you feel like you’re in a Henry James novel, sitting in the very comfortable yet tasteful living room of the high society lady you’ve come to call on.  The special Holiday Classic Tea comes with a shot glass sized mug of hot apple cider, and the best blueberry scones you’ve ever tasted, still warm from the oven of course!  A Christmas tree in the corner makes the room feel very festive.  Downstairs in the gift shop, a gingerbread house is on display, a flickering light inside it making it appear as if there is a roaring fireplace in the house.   
 

Next Stop- Midtown: You can’t do Christmas in New York without checking out the decorations in midtown.  I walk down 5^th ave, under the huge, white snowflake suspended in the air on 59^th street.  The Fendi building is my favorite every year.  Two belts made out of white Christmas lights are fastened around the building, and strings of lights hang around them like icicles.  Saks has outdone themselves this year.  They have a light show projected on the building every thirteen minutes, which consists of horns emitting bubbles that are popped by falling snowflakes.  Across from Saks is Rockefeller Center.  Even though I see the Rockefeller Center tree every year, I’m still always surprised at how huge and breathtaking it is.  

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December 22^st

From Candlelight to Bubble light- A 1950s Christmas in an 1850s House: On East 4^th Street in the NYU neighborhood, a nineteenth century wealthy merchant’s house has been decorated for Christmas in 1950’s style.  In the 1950’s, your grandparents were a happy young couple, and your
parents were infants.  Christmas had just become the huge, commercial holiday in America that we know it as today within the last few decades.  Despite the racial tension and the images of jolly housewives who never left the kitchen that were characteristic of the 1950s, it is a decade that we look back on with an air of nostalgia.  You can feel that nostalgia stepping into the house.  It has that great, wood smell that
old houses always seem to have.  An army of light-up, plastic Santas and snowmen, popular Christmas decorations in the 50s, stands in the first floor hallway.  In the living room, a white, artificial Christmas tree is decked out with rainbow lights.  The 50s style screams tacky, colorful, and heartwarming.  You can’t step into the living room without imagining a
family with lots of children, sitting by the fireplace, drinking hot cocoa and waiting for Santa Claus to arrive.  You can’t look at the dining table, set with a Christmas tablecloth, a mini Christmas tree serving as a center piece, without wishing it was your own family sitting down at this table for a 1950s Christmas dinner.         
 

Next Stop- The Lights in Dyker Heights
Every Christmas season, the inhabitants of this heavily Italian Brooklyn neighborhood attempt to outdo their neighbors in their holiday decorations.  The result is one of the most spectacular displays of Christmas lights on the East coast.  Not a bush, tree, or fence is left uncovered by white, red, green, or blue lights.  Life-sized,
inflatable snow globes are set up on the lawns.  At one house, a ten-foot tall mechanical Santa Claus wishes passersby a merry Christmas.  At another house, a carousel of reindeer turns round and round.  Some lawns boast rows of light-up angels; others have life-sized crèches.  If the North Pole
were in Brooklyn, this is what is would look like.   
 
 
December 23^rd

The Bryant Park Christmas Market: Obviously, I have a particular fondness for Christmas markets.  The Bryant Park Christmas market is probably my favorite New York holiday activity.  In the center of the park, an ice skating rink is crowded with people awkwardly clutching their friends or significant others, and small children weaving around their legs, putting all the precarious adult skaters to shame.  The backdrop of the rink is a towering tree, hung with green and blue lights, and Celsius, a hip, two-story restaurant, the side facing the rink made entirely of glass so that patrons can look out at the skaters.  The rest of the park is filled with stalls selling everything from life-sized Star Wars figures made out of metal, to soap in the shape of different fruits, so realistic that if someone gave me a bunch of the grapes for Christmas I would
probably eat them.  I stop to get some steamed dumplings at the dumpling stall, and then go next door to the Max Brenner store, where I have the best, thickest, most chocolatey hot chocolate I have ever tasted in my entire life.  Next I browse a stall selling ornaments, and pick out an intricate little wine bottle ornament to hang on the tree at home.     
 

Next Stop- The Macy’s Holiday Windows: The Macy’s windows are incredibly trippy this year.  The first window is a video that I can’t really do justice to in writing.  In it there is a ship flying through space, and a spinning earth with cool, futuristic buildings and a giant Ferris wheel on it. 
The ensuing windows have futuristic figures riding flying bikes, spinning gingerbread men, and a lab where wishes, hopes, and dreams are collected.    
 
I hope you’re all getting as much into the holiday spirit as I am, wherever you are!  Now I’m off to construct a gingerbread village and watch my all-time favorite holiday classic, The Muppet Christmas Carol.