Home Is Where the Heart Is: 6 Reasons Why There's No Place Like NYC for the Holidays

It doesn't matter whether you're on Staten Island, in the Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn, or Manhattan. All five boroughs are going big for the holidays, and all five boroughs are a cheery-ass place to be this time of year. 

From absolutely decadent holiday decorations, to all around holiday cheer, you might notice that New York City is the most lovely place to be during the holidays.

Why? Well you can go ice skating at any of the city's lovely rinks. You can attend any number of public holiday gatherings, and your friends are bound to throw some sort of holiday get-smashed-bash.

Plus, of course, we can't gloss over the dazzling, twinkling holiday lights that adorn the city all season long. If there were a worldwide competition for holiday cheer, we're pretty sure we'd come out on top unanimously. 

Read on to find out why we believe with all our hearts that there's no where to be but NYC for the holiday season.


1. Park Avenue

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From the window designs on 5th Avenue to the fir trees on Park Avenue, NYC is a truly enchanted place to be over the holiday season. 

How many fir trees are on Park Avenue, you're wondering? Well, it's not even a big deal. There are just 104 fir trees lining the side of the road on Park Avenue from 54th through 97th Streets.

They were first ignited 70 years ago to pay homage to all the men and women who were killed in World War II, so its beauty carries special brilliance due to its important, memorialized meaning.

There's also an ice sculpture design sculpted by Charles Dawes on the corner of Barrington Street and Park Avenue, lights sparkling on buildings all the way up Park Avenue. It's absolutely exploding with holiday spirit, is our point.


2. Winter wonderlands

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From Target's Wonderland; with its games, giant LEGO ship and Frozen Castle, to Bryant Park's Winter Village, there are a lot of places in the city that are absolutely decked out for the holidays.

All you have to do is take one trip out to Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn to witness the World's Largest Menorah, or the New York Public Library to visit its giant tree shrouded by famous, first edition festive books to be completely filled with a holiday cheer.

Get your way uptown to the Dana A. Discovery Center in Central Park to see its beautifully adorned trees shining in the middle of the Harlem Meer, then get yourself to the Bronx and see the New York Botanical Garden's intricate holiday train show.

The trains rush past 150 miniature versions of NYC landmarks. What we're saying is, NYC goes all out for the holiday season, all over the place. Plenty of NYC's typical landmarks are decked out into winter wonderlands. You should go check them out.


3. Holiday markets

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Sure, you could go shopping at any number of malls or department stores, any number of places where the store's wares were assembled in a factory by a corporation didn't care, or you could, you know, come to NYC.

We don't want to toot our own horns or anything, we're just totally going to toot them. There are a ton of completely and totally festive holiday markets in NYC.

There's the Union Square Holiday Market, adorned with an array of warm and indulgent food, handmade jewelry and accessories, and socially conscious gifts for everyone in your life.

There's the Grand Central Holiday Fair, which features 76 vendors, all of whom are selling a wide array of gifts at a range of prices until December 24th. 

There's the Columbus Circle Holiday Market, offering food vendors at which to indulge in a hot meal or snack, plus handmade gifts, handcrafted homemade accessories, beautiful handmade jewelry, and other types of gifts for sale.

Our point is this. Plenty of NYC's busiest hubs explode in a festive decadence for the holiday season, selling delicious food and thoughtful gifts. It feels entirely full of holiday cheer to check them out.

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4. Concerts

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The amount of festive concerts happening in this city over the holiday season are just another reason NYC is the greatest city to be in during the holiday season. 

Anonymous 4 is performing "The Last Noel" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on December 22nd. Unsilent Night, Phil Klein's collaborative, community boombox march, is going down in its quintessential NYC brilliance on the night of December 12th.

Merry Tuba Christmas, the free concert at Rockefeller Plaza that features hundreds of tenor and bass tuba players completely rocking out to holiday tunes will go down on December 13th at 3:30 p.m.

There are Winter Solstice Celebration Concerts at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine on December 17th, 18th, and 19th, and we expect they'll all be completely enthralling. 

Of course, there are also the absurdly festive Radio City Christmas Spectacular, Mariah Carey's Annual Christmas Concert at the Beacon Theatre on December 11th and 12th, and plenty of other festive shows.


5. Bar crawls

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In case you haven't heard, SantaCon is not the only bar crawl happening in the city this season. Although, it definitely is the one with the most exposure, and it can be a fun, wild day of day drinking if you come prepared to survive.

If you hate SantaCon, though, don't fear. There are a ton of other festive ways to drink your way from bar to bar; since we all know drinking is what the holidays in NYC are really about.

There's the Ugly Sweater Pub Crawl in the East Village on December 12th. There's also the New Year's Eve Pub Crawl going down in the East Village on December 31st, and the Hanukkah Bar Crawl in Hoboken on December 12th.

We're entirely grateful we've got this perfectly convenient excuse to get completely smashed, in a really festive way of course, this season.


6. Holiday parties

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As we've already mentioned, the holidays are a nice, neat, convenient excuse for New Yorkers all throughout the city to throw wild ragers.

This includes, of course, your holiday office party. The one night of the year you get to get completely smashed with all your coworkers.

Of course, you have to play it cool in your holiday office party situation; but this is obviously not the case when you're getting wild with your friends for the holidays. 

Inevitably, members of your crew will throw an ugly sweater party, a Hanukah party, or any type of party that encapsulates holiday cheer.

Now, we all know that "holiday party" is just a euphemism for "get a smashed as possible," but the holidays do offer a really convenient cover for partying really hard during the holiday season. Which is just another reason we're grateful to live in this city during the holidays. 

Check out 7 Best Christmas Trees in NYC.

[Feature Image Courtesy NewYork.com] 

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