Holidays in New York: Romanticism vs Reality
Now that it’s the holiday season, New York is decked out in all of its famous holiday festivities – the Rockefeller tree, the Saks light show, the holiday markets, and even the ridiculously overpriced bike cabs are participating by playing Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas is You” on loop. When I was younger, and even up until a few years ago when I was visiting the city in high school before I started school, I was mesmerized by Christmas time in New York. However, now that I’m in my senior year and have been in New York for four holiday seasons, it’s become increasingly evident how romanticized the holidays are here – and how drastic the reality of it is, especially as a student.
Especially now that this is the first “normal” holiday season since the pandemic started, the tourism in New York around this time has been unbelievable. A couple of weekends ago, I went up to Bryant Park and around Rockefeller to see the market and tree. The market was hardly walkable, and all the food seemed to get even more expensive with each stand, and the Rockefeller tree was not even reachable without working through a mob. I’ve seen at least a dozen TikToks from influencers advertising the markets in “Everything I ate at the *insert park* Winter Market” style videos, where one person has purchased food from multiple stands. That’s part of what drew me to go to Bryant Park, but arriving to find that the average price for a small hot chocolate was $10 was disappointing, but not surprising. Those types of videos are cute, but the creators fail to mention the prices, and in reality, they easily spent at least $100 on food I can only assume they did not finish.
Getting to the tree and seeing the Saks light show was an ordeal in itself. There was a sea of people, all seemingly tourists, encompassing each block leading up to all sides of the tree. I couldn’t count how many police officers were there trying to direct people to keep the crowd moving, so ended up taking a couple of pictures from a distance and calling it a day, not even attempting to get closer. Even beyond Rockefeller and into Midtown, there are so many tourists – it was overwhelming. I saw a Broadway show as an E-Board outing last week, and when we exited the theater, there were at least 15 bike cabs blasting Mariah and tourists blocking the sidewalks all around the theater. It was a sensory overload.
Aside from the obnoxious tourism, if I wanted to go out more and make the most of New York’s holiday festivities, it felt almost impossible to do so with school and the looming pressure of finals. Right after Thanksgiving break, finals are only about two or three weeks away, and all the stress from studying, exams, papers, projects, and the plethora of work we are assigned – and added on seasonal depression and sometimes the unforgiving cold – make it seem impossible to fully enjoy the holidays. NYU also bans Christmas trees, real and fake, and other decorations deemed as flammable from dorms, which is a bit of an extra letdown for those who want to decorate for the holidays.
While I do think I was able to enjoy some of New York’s holiday season, it is becoming increasingly romanticized through TV, movies and ,especially now, TikTok. Maybe when I’m no longer a student, the holidays here will be less demanding and stressful, and hopefully, I’ll have the time (and patience) to battle the extreme tourism and go back to the romanticism I had of Christmas in New York when I was fifteen. But, for now, I’ll keep avoiding the $30 sandwiches and crowds and admire the festivities from a distance.
