Christmas in New York will be strange but some things still make me feel festive

So we weren’t able to make it home to Britain this year and the present I bought my partner may not turn up for months – but I’ve still tried to be optimistic, writes Holly Baxter

A house decorated in Christmas lights in the Dyker Heights neighbourhood of Brooklyn (EPA)

Christmas is going to look a little different for us this year, as no doubt it will for most people reading this. For those in London and the rest of the southeast who have had to cancel their festivities at short notice, you have my deepest sympathies. I went through what you’re going through in November when I realised it wouldn’t be feasible for E and I to travel back to see our families for the holidays. At least we hadn’t bought a family sized turkey and had time to (mostly) make sure our presents got to the right place, even if we couldn’t be there at the opening.

I say “mostly” because, of course, 2020 threw a spanner in the works. The custom-made gift I ordered for E from London – on the 7th, so that it would definitely get there in time – has been mysteriously absent from our building’s mailroom despite landing in the country on the 10th. Today, after three phone calls with some extremely frustrated members of the border force, I found out what had happened: it had been randomly selected for extra checks by US Customs, chucked into a shipping container in a warehouse and forgotten about. Now it’s scheduled to leave the warehouse “within 90 business days”, meaning it’ll probably be ready around about the time the US becomes a post-apocalyptic wasteland where we have to hunt stray dogs for food. 

Needless to say, I’m now spending my lunch hours in the couple of days before Christmas hunting Brooklyn for a passable gift, a la Arnold Schwarzenegger in Jingle All the Way (whose aesthetic I have always strived to mirror). Fully masked and welly-booted in the snow, I am not above kicking a few old ladies out the way for a chance at the last non-embarrassing present in the local Target.

Despite my stress levels skyrocketing beside him, E has been surprisingly chipper about our semi-cancelled Christmas. “I think this is my favorite Christmas of my adult life!” he said to me this weekend, as the world burned around us, politicians wept openly and people dropped dead by the thousand. No, he’s not a supervillain: for him, a semi-locked-down Christmas with a PlayStation and no international travel is more than enough. He’s happy enough not reading the news. He has his Zoom poker night and his slippers and a six-pack of hipster beer and, as far as he’s concerned, everything is fine.I’ve tried to join in with his optimistic outlook. Over the weekend, we made a fondue (fondue set courtesy of my best friend, who lives in Switzerland and had it mailed over from Zurich as an engagement gift) and a gingerbread house (purchased from a friendly woman on the side of the street, for ages 3-5 but also highly recommended for stir-crazy couples in their thirties). We also took a trip to Dyker Heights, an isolated Brooklyn neighbourhood up near Staten Island, famous for the residents’ festive lighting displays. This being America, the competitive displays were more than we Brits could ever have imagined. Remember when your mum used to put a peg on a pile of sticks and call it a nativity scene? (No? Just mine?) Well, this was… not that. 

In a two-street radius, we saw: a moving teddy bear the same size as the house whose garden it was in; a gigantic inflatable Grinch on a sleigh, accompanied by Max the dog; a makeshift stable presided over by Santa, which had individual stalls for Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner and Blitzen, each with a reindeer head poking out; a light-up nativity where Mary and Joseph rubbed shoulders with Santa, a candy cane forest and the ice palace from Frozen; a tree that blasted Christmas songs out of its baubles; two gargoyles covered in sparkling wreaths; two drummer-boys, at the entrance to a house, who actually drummed; a 7ft nutcracker guarding three penguins on a sleigh in front of a gigantic, screaming Santa’s face; and three mechanical Santas from different eras, gesturing somewhat ominously from inside three large windows for people to come inside the house they guarded.

If that doesn’t make you feel festive despite the madness outside your window, I don’t know what will. Here’s to a marginally better 2021!

Holly will return in the new year