City sidewalks, busy sidewalks
Dressed in holiday style
In the air there's a feeling
Of Christmas
Children laughing, people passing
Meeting smile after smile...
(...and the song continues)
It's Christmas time in the city
Strings of streetlights, even stoplights
Blink a bright red and green
As the shoppers rush home with their treasures
Hear the snow crunch...
This was my Christmas wish, a dream-come-true. Let's visit our kids in Brooklyn in early December and experience the magic of NYC at Christmas. Traffic. Standing in line. Jockeying for a seat on the train. Adrenaline rush. The hype of the Big Apple is definitely on steroids during the holiday season. Shop windows and billboards display extravagant imaginings of designers and marketing gurus. Hotels, restuarants, and harbor lights twinkle in a particularly festive way. The proverbial "hustle and bustle" is palpable as subways screech through the annals of the city delivering us to museums, Times Square, SOHO, The 9/11 Memorial, Radio City Music Hall, and glorious vantage points from where we watch the nightlights waking up on the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges.
Just like in the movies, ice skaters spin figure-eights near the tree at Rockefeller Center. We pose together at the spot where Nathan and Celina were photographed six years ago when they made a daytrip to the city and he proposed atop the Empire State building overlooking this city they have grown to love.
The renowned Christmas Spectacular at Radio City Music Hall is nothing short of...well, spectacular!! The production, everything one would expect featuring those precision-trained Rockettes, is spell-binding. Of particular amazement is the fact that, in this day and age of political correctness, the performance remains totally Christmas-oriented. While snowflakes and nutcracker and Santa vignettes are feted, the event culminates with a glorious nativity scene in which scripture is quoted and the birth of Christ is portrayed. Show times happen six times per day on Saturdays, five on Sundays, four on weekdays between mid-November and mid-January each year since the 1930's. Think of the number of people that are seeing the message of the Savior's birth...witnessing the testimony of Emmanuel, God with us, that truth that remains constant through the ages.
Amidst the towering skyscrapers and the ancient awe of St. Patricks Cathedral, in the juxtaposition between historic and innovative architecture, among broken fragments and shimmering structures, we witnessed anew that there, remains, indeed, a foundation that is unshakeable, unchangeable, unalterable.
And the story grows old
The Savior we love still watches His fold.
And his star still shines over city and mart
And His voice still speaks to the listening heart.
PS The only thing we "ordered" for our gala weekend that we didn't get was a Thomas Kinkaid snowfall setting aglow street lights and dusting the Brooklyn brownstones. But all is righted with the news that our Brooklyn family is relocating to Atlanta in 2016!
