I have favorite things about the city at Christmas-time:
The sidewalks are clogged with vendors selling Christmas trees and boughs. Makeshift wooden frames keep the trees upright and wreaths are also stacked like donuts on the sidewalk. In the Village last week, a French girl sold me four boughs from a stack for "az much az you'd like to pay." (I payed three bucks.)
There is no doubt that the windows at Macy's and Rockefeller Center are tourist havens, but is there anything so quintessential? There is a reason that we go back every year to see the sights. It's comforting, even in the harshest winter winds.
The platform for the altar at Queen of All Saints is decorated with 14 evergreen trees, each at least eight feet tall. The servers look like they could start a snowball fight at any time, taking cover behind the boughs and peeking out while waiting for Monsigneur to shout "GO!"
The first snows make the city quiet and magical. On our street, children slide along, pushing themselves on old cardboard boxes. Before it all melts to slush, there is a layer of downy white on every stoop. With the first snow, delivery boys from take-out restaurants put on yellow slickers and wrap their heavy chain-link bike locks around their waist and ride their bikes through the snow delivering dinner to all the lazy New Yorkers who are doing their best to watch the delights from behind glass. I tipped five bucks for a twelve dollar pizza.
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