Celebrating Christmas in New York is can be tricky. On the one hand, post Thanksgiving, Christmas essentially throws up in midtown - spreading Christmas joy and holiday lights in storefronts and centers across the city's midsection. Every Park and Square from Bryant to Union is suddenly covered with makeshift shops of artisan crafts and Christmas goodies. Every major retailer takes a new pride in dressing its windows with ornate displays complete with fake snow, moving parts, and gasps from the crowd inevitably gathered. The center of town - from the tree in Rockefeller Center to the Rockets kicking up their heels a half block away - is dense with people, all clamoring to breathe in the magic and mysticism of Christmas in New York.
In the outer neighborhoods however, things are a little more low key. I was walking my dog Christmas morning in the park and a woman standing next to me exclaimed: "I can't wait until this damn holiday is over. If one more person wishes a Merry christmas to a Jew, I'm going to lose it."
New York is a melting pot - and as such - a variety of religions co-exist in close proximity. Christmas Eve I was standing in line to purchase a bottle of wine. The women taking the order appeared to be East Indian. She wished the patron in front of me a Merry Christmas to which he responded, "the same to you!" Come on, I thought to myself - do you really think she celebrates Christmas? OF course it was possible, but making such an assumption seemed to me a bit of a leap.
assumption that everyone you meet celebrates the birth of Jesus Christ. Wishing people a happy new year is pretty safe - unless you're in Chinatown, but Christmas in New York, quite honestly, seems to be mostly for the tourists.
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