People often ask me whether I'll ever move back down South, where I'm from. I've lived in New York for 15 years, and I still can't answer that question. I think a lot of people are like me in this respect: they move here simply because they want to try it out for awhile, but they end up staying longer than they thought they would. We all know by heart the schedules for planes back to our home towns, but we stay here nonetheless.

New York City welcomes more than a million visitors each December. As we all know, there's so much to see here during the Holidays: Radio City's Christmas Spectacular, The Nutcracker at Lincoln Center, the windows at Saks, Barney's, and Lord & Taylor, and, of course, THE Tree. Starting with Santa's "arrival" for a month-long stay at Macy's (via its Thanksgiving Day Parade), the Holiday press does not let up until the Big Ball drops in Times Square.

Snow or no snow, the show goes on, and absolutely everybody joins in. Santas en masse ring bells for charities of every stripe. Churches and concert halls mount more Messiah's than any schedule can Handel. Even the most Charlie Brownish city tree gets its share of lights.  It's been this way at least since Clark Clement Moore wrote "T'was the night before Christmas" more than 150 years ago ("Chelsea," the neighborhood nestled between Midtown and Greenwich Village on the West Side of Manhattan, was Moore's family farm).

Of course, there's much more to see in New York during December than Christmas fanfare. The City is most magical in late Fall and Winter. With the sun long gone before work lets out, office towers literally leap to life. Seen from afar, they sparkle like a heap of diamonds. Between these concrete and steel cathedrals, the air is often redolent of wood smoke or of restaurants in high gear. Pedestrians scurry about, clutching their coats and stacks of packages.

I once heard about a man originally from Alabama who sat for 35 years as a federal judge for the Second Circuit in Manhattan's Financial District. He retired and moved back home, but six months later, he was back, saying, "Ah may be from Alabama, but ah'm a New Yorker now!"

© 2003 Mark R. Crosby. First published in Travel + Life, November/December 2003.