Christmastime in New York

One of my most favorite times of the year in New York is Christmas. I love to see all the decorations in the store windows, streets, museums and, well, everywhere! It's a magical time and I always find myself humming "Silver Bells" because its such a fitting song.

Christmas decorations start to appear in our neighborhood of Sunnyside, Queens during Thanksgiving weekend. The white snowy garlands that span Queens Boulevard and Greenpoint Avenue, along with the snowflakes on the street lamps, light up at night. It gives our bustling corner of the city a festive, almost united, feeling. 

Our little family's tradition is to decorate the apartment for Christmas on December 1st. We picked out our miniature Christmas tree from one of the many tree lots set up along the sidewalks in Sunnyside the day before the first, as it fell on a Sunday this year. Brian carried it home and we got it all situated in our stand. After church the next day we came home and pulled out all of our decorations. We had so many more ornaments this Christmas because of all the traveling we did this year. We might need a bigger tree next year if we keep up the travelling. It's almost magical how our decorations transform our scraggly little branch into a glowing, sparkling, full tree. It always reminds me of Charlie Brown's Christmas Tree. 

I added some ribbon and posterboard letters to our stockings this year to jazz them up a bit.

Brian's parents came to visit us December 4th through the 12th, so we got to go see the city's decorations with them. We visited Macy's on one of our shopping trips and got to see it in all of it's Christmas glory.

We stopped at the New York Public Library on 5th Avenue in Manhattan. The stone lions were quite festive with their giant wreaths.

The interior of the library is always gorgeous, but it was especially so on this visit. There was a beautiful Christmas tree in the foyer and verdant green garlands twined around the banisters and large candelabras.

Bryant Park sits on the west side of the library. There is a holiday fair set up there with little pop-up shops selling trinkets, gifts, all manner of treats and beverages. I'm sure its always crowded, but it was especially so because we were there on a Saturday. The park isn't very big at all, only one city block wide, but it took us forever to wind our way through the shoulder-to-shoulder crowd to get to a good spot to take pictures.

I really loved the tree in the center of all the shops. It was decorated in a red, white and blue color scheme.

We made our way by subway up to the Natural History Museum. Outside it's doors were dinosaur-shaped topiaries lit up with lights. We got there 15 minutes before closing time so they let us enter the museum for free. We were there to see the Origami Christmas Tree. After asking for directions and wandering through some hallways trying not to be distracted by the awesome exhibits we were passing by.

We finally found it in the great hall with the ginormous dugout canoe hanging from the ceiling. I was worried that the tree would be hokey and not worth our trip up there, but it was actually really cool. I read on their website that there are over 800 origami ornaments on the tree, and that the staff begins making the ornaments in July.

Of all the Christmas Trees that we saw, Brian said that this was his favorite, and I have to agree that it was one of the coolest. They had all sorts of origami figures: dinosaurs, birds, snakes, crabs, cheetahs, pigs, penguins, insects and fish. We stayed and looked at it for quite a long time because there were so many cool ornaments to discover.

By the time we left the Natural History Museum, it had gotten dark outside. We then went to Rockefeller Center to see the Christmas Tree there. It's kind of become a holiday tradition for Brian and I, and also Layne and Kris had never seen it before.

We came out of the Rockefellar Building and were right next to the tree. It took us a good half and hour to wind our way through the crushing crowd around the block to get the front view of it. Honestly, we had to take baby steps as we inched our way through the crowd. Again, it was probably due to the fact that it was a Saturday night, but it was the most crowded we had ever seen. We finally made our way up front and stopped to watch the skaters in front of the Prometheus statue.

It was as big and gorgeous as always. With over 30,000 lights it's hard to see the tree underneath!

On the way home we went up to the top of Grand Central to see the light show. We stopped to watch the terminal's giant windows change colors for awhile, but nothing else really happened so we left. We were hoping to stop at the transit museum there to see the train show, but it had closed by the time we got to the terminal.

I ended up getting an awful cold towards the end of Layne and Kris' visit. The cold weather lasted until about two days after Christmas. I felt so crappy that we didn't make it out to see any of the other Christmas decorations or events before we flew to Idaho. I'm sad that we didn't get to see the MET's Christmas Tree decorated with angels and a creche, the train show at Grand Central Terminal, or the South Street Seaport's Christmas Tree. Oh well, there's always next year.