NYC Christmas images

Chestnuts roasting in the food cart on the southeast corner of 43rd Street and 6th Avenue. Not quite on an open fire, but with the same aroma many people associate with the Christmas holidays.

A child in a stroller excitedly points to an object above the southwest corner of 44th Street and 5th Avenue. The woman pushing him acknowledges his words, saying with a foreign accent, "Clock. Yes, clock!"

People, some of them dressed up and walking quickly, others dressed down and moving slowly, hold bags of gifts.

Men greet each other with handshakes and begin talking. Women hug good-bye after a meal.

A guy steps out of a taxi in front of the Met Life Building on 45th Street and squeezes a $5 bill into the red bucket next to a Salvation Army worker who breaks the rhythm of his bells only for a second to say "Thank you." A few feet away, a newspaper vendor sits quietly, with few customers.

On 5th Avenue near 48th Street, a man walks past a deformed woman sitting on the sidewalk, then turns around to give her money. Several blocks uptown, a guy pulls out a pack of chips from a lunch bag and gives it to a beggar.

Two New York Police Department officers, one a man the other a woman, smile while posing for pictures with tourists, the Times Square crowd behind them.

Digital cameras capture image after image of the bright lights of Times Square, the big tree at Rockefeller Center, the marquee outside Radio City Music Hall, the skaters at Bryant Park, the elegant white lights of the Chrysler Building and the colorful lighting on the Empire State Building.

Sometimes, though, it's minds that capture images of Christmas in New York City and digitizes them in words.

Santacon comes to town

The timing could not have been more ironic. On Friday night, Yes, Virgina, an animated Christmas special set in New York in 1897, aired on network television. On Saturday, Santacon, an excuse for as many as 1400 characters in Santa Claus suits to party, played out across New York City’s bars and streets.

I realized something strange was afoot when I saw a tall guy dressed like Santa Claus walking in Penn Station. He looked like he could stuff a bag of toys down a chimney just by standing on the tips of his toes. Instead, he dutifully purchased a ticket back to Long Island, presumably en route to the North Pole where elves and reindeer are finalizing preparations for another Christmas Eve.

Moments later, I saw groups of red-suited white-bearded people on subway cars. Sightings of Santas, some of them women with very short skirts under their short red and white coats, continued on the East Side in the early evening. Riding a cab along Second Avenue hours later, I saw groups of Santa Claus lookalikes hanging outside a number of bars.

According to its web site, the New York City Santacon event “is a non-denominational, non-commercial, non-political and non-sensical Santa Claus convention that occurs once a year for absolutely no reason.” There was some revelry around town, for sure, but no Santa arrests, according to a newspaper report. A tweet stated, though, that police prevented Santas from occupying the red bleachers in Times Square, saying, “You can’t stay here.”

Santa is not Superman, however, and some of the red-suited characters I saw at Penn Station as midnight approached seemed ready to turn into pumpkins. They sat on the floor, glazed eyes half-shut, slumped by their companions, as if they were thinking, “Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good-night.”

If an 8-year-old child witnessed the Santacon spectacle, what would they say? If a newspaper editor was challenged by a child to explain whether Santa Claus is real, what would they write? “Yes, Virginia, there is a…Santacon.”