The farm
 The journey
Tree sellers
Christmas in New York
Home at last
O Christmas Tree 
Chapter 4: Christmas in New York 

s soon as the sky darkens, the sidewalks fill with people. Nut roasters, sausage vendors and pretzel makers pull up their carts. Santa works the crowd for tips. It takes a metal barricade and two police officers hollering directives to contain the crowds crossing 49th St.  

What’s more popular than the Statue of Liberty, more famous than the Empire State Building? 

On December evenings, New York City’s biggest attraction of all is the 75-foot tall Rockefeller Center Christmas tree decked out with five miles of lights.There are Quebec Christmas trees for sale on every  third street corner in New York City, but the Grande Dame is an all-American Norway Spruce from the wild.  Every year, from the minute it is lit until the decorations come down after New Year’s, in the most famous tree in the world draws hundreds of thousands of visitors.
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A family looks at a musical animation projected onto a building across the street from Rockefeller Center in New York City.
It’s not just Rockefeller Center. All of New York City, ablaze with holiday lights, festooned with baubles and balls and garland, feels like the set of a Christmas movie. Shoppers race around with bags full of loot. In Bryant Park, couples in puffy parkas hold hands and skate around the Christmas tree. Up and down Fifth Ave., people stop to ooh and aah at the department-store window displays. 

In a restaurant across the street from Lincoln Center, little girls in party dresses have breakfast with their grandmother before the matinee showing of The Nutcracker. Each neighbourhood, it seems, has its own Christmas rituals and every tree its own followers. “Nobody does Christmas like New York,” sighs Yolande DeViens, who is here from Paris for a week with friends, buying Christmas gifts and the sparkliest ornaments she can find.
SLIDESHOW: The Christmas tree at Bryant Park is the centrepiece of a winter village complete with a skating rink, bar and shops.
A woman poses for a photo beside the Christmas tree at Bryant Park.
Tourists buy up New York-themed Christmas tree ornaments in a boutique at the Winter Village at Bryant Park.
One of New York's most famous indoor Christmas trees is at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It features a Baroque crèche from Naples.
The Met's 20-foot blue spruce is adorned with cherubs and surrounded by figures from the Nativity.
The tree in Dante Park across the street from the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts isn't big, but New Yorkers love it becasue it's the first of the season to be lit.
Draped lights create a passageway and set the holiday mood at Chelsea Market.
A paper cone Christmas tree is this year's eco-friendly tree at Chelsea Market. Last year's was made of plastic bottles.
All over New York, visitors snap pictures of the cinematic holiday scenes. Of them all, the Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center is the most famous.
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