Corporate Christmas

I ventured into Manhattan today to find the sort of artsy Christmas cards that I like to send to my clients. I found what I needed at Barnes & Noble—nondenominational photography cards depicting winter scenes—then walked a few blocks uptown to Rockefeller Center. Every year at Christmastime, I make a point of walking around the plaza to watch the skaters and observe the decorations and the enormous tree.

I’m not sure why I keep doing this every year, as the experience always leaves me feeling somewhat numb. Maybe it’s the giganticism that turns me off: the 20-foot toy soldiers, the 10-foot wire angels, the 76-foot Christmas tree. Combined with the milling, shoulder-to-shoulder crowd, all of this makes me feel small.

Maybe that’s the idea. Maybe it’s supposed to make me feel like a child, a kid again, gazing up at a world made by giants—i.e., adults.

The decorations along Sixth Avenue are even more extreme. Ten-foot Christmas balls float in a fountain outside one skyscraper, as if they’ve fallen off some colossal tannenbaum. Six-foot faux holiday light bulbs sit in another fountain, as if dropped by some careless giant. These baubles are so large that they seem designed to make me feel like an embryo, not a child.

I don’t like feeling infantilized; that’s not the Christmas spirit I want. I also don’t much appreciate the overly art-directed, oh-so-tasteful ambiance of Rockefeller Center’s less spectacular holiday wrappings—the gold lamé flags that ring the skating rink, for example, or the swaths of evergreen dotted with tiny white sparkle lights. It’s impressive to be sure (the tourists ooh and aah) but cold and corporate, too. I’d rather see something naïve but sincere—a row house with a tree in the window and a wreath on the door, or even something religious. Isn’t that what it’s all about?

Christmas at Rockefeller Center