New York at Christmas

New York at Christmas is the most famous municipal performance in the world, the tree, the windows, the lights, the skaters, and the regulars will tell you two true things about it. The first is that it is genuinely magnificent and no amount of cynicism survives contact with it. The second is that it must be worked like a system, since the crowds of December are the price of the show, and the visitor who plans around them gets the magic at a fraction of the trampling. Everything below assumes two or three nights in December.

December rooms price at the year's peak and book by October, so this is the trip to reserve the moment it is imagined. Midtown puts the spectacle at the door and the crowds with it, while downtown and the Village offer quieter evenings a subway ride from the show. The first two weeks of December carry the full production with slightly thinner crowds than the holiday week itself, which is the regulars' window.

The tree at Rockefeller Center and the department store windows along Fifth Avenue are the headline, and the system for them is simple, go early or go late. The windows at eight in the morning are yours alone, and the tree after ten at night belongs to couples rather than crowds. The lights of Dyker Heights in Brooklyn, where whole blocks of houses compete at a scale that must be seen to be believed, make the connoisseur's evening excursion.

December is when the city's great warhorses take the stage, the ballet's Nutcracker above all, and booking one of them turns the trip from sightseeing into occasion. The concert halls run carols and oratorios all month, the museums are blessedly calm while everyone else is shopping, and the theater district sells its January seats at December's end, a fact the regulars exploit.

The city's restaurants dress for the month, and the correct December rotation includes one grand old room doing its holiday best, booked weeks ahead, one long hotel tea or lobby drink amid the decorations, and the street-level pleasures, chestnuts, bakery windows, the market stalls at Union Square and Bryant Park, that cost almost nothing and carry half the season.

Book everything early, then build each day as one anchor event plus wandering, since December rewards flexibility around a fixed point. Dress warmly enough to stay outside, because the season happens on the sidewalks. Skate once, at the park's rink rather than the famous one, where the line is shorter and the setting arguably better.

On the last night, walk up Fifth Avenue after ten, when the windows glow for almost no one and the tree stands nearly private. The city puts on this show every year whether anyone watches, but it is better with you there, and it knows it.