The Ghost of Christmas (Books) Pas

Review by Michael Quinn

Like the Ghost of Christmas Past in Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, I’m taking you back in time. Come. Hold my hand. No need to be afraid. We’re flying out your apartment window, and heading toward Manhattan.

Look at all those people down there. So much hustle and bustle. Why, it’s Christmastime! There’s the tree in Rockefeller Center. How small it looks from up here. And even smaller, like a tiny red dot, is the four-foot-nine-inch woman in the red coat standing next to it. That’s Sibyl McCormac Groff. She goes by many other names—the Elf, Queen Santa, the Lady in Red—but given her love of Christmas and the city, the most apt name of all is the Spirited New Yorker. Her book, A New York Christmas: Ho-Ho-Ho at Gothamtide!, is her love letter to both the holiday and the place we all call home. If you missed this gem when it came out in 2017, there’s no time like the present to take a closer look.

This “wee portable booklet” is bursting with the tour guide and cultural historian’s recommendations, remembrances, and photos of the best places to see trees, hear music, window shop, stroll through outdoor markets, and eat holiday fare. Lest we start to feel overwhelmed, “only the most important buildings and things get a lot of detail,” she assures us.

You don’t have to believe in anything to enjoy what the city serves up this time of year, McCormac Groff reasons. In fact, she coined the season “Gothamtide” in order to “reflect the commonalities of the diverse secular, vernacular, and universal aspects of holidays from different countries and religions.” Rooted in pagan traditions (a celebration of the return of the sun after the long, dark days leading up to the winter solstice), Christmas is, more than anything else, a mood.

That Christmas spirit is captured famously in Dickens’ most well-known story. While A Christmas Carol moves us on an emotional level, it also reminds us of our responsibility to the people around us, especially the less fortunate. McCormac Groff’s hero is another social reformer, Jacob Riis, who put up the first public Christmas tree in Madison Square Park in 1912 so that everyone could enjoy it.

McCormac Groff fell in love with the city when she first visited from upstate as a child. She stayed at the Plaza, and knew herself to be at the very center of the world, a bit like the lucky little girl in Kay Thompson’s Eloise. McCormac Groff grew up to be her own New York character: a beloved Rockefeller Center tour guide, carrying a giant candy cane like a staff, leading flocks of tourists to admire the world’s most famous Christmas tree (“My tree, as I call it”): always a Norwegian spruce, at least 65 feet tall, and usually between 50 and 100 years old.

To avoid the crowds at the tree lighting, she suggests using the International Building on Fifth Avenue as a shortcut. And if you go by Radio City Music Hall early in the morning, you just might catch a glimpse of the camels from the “Christmas Spectacular” out for their morning constitutional. A deep admirer of architecture, McCormac Groff also recommends Radio City as a great place to see Art Deco interiors—especially the downstairs men’s room!

From the most-popular to the little-known, there’s something for everyone on McCormac Groff’s list of recommendations, whether it’s watching the giant balloons get inflated the night before the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, admiring the windows at Bergdorf Goodman (“the crowds are pushy, so do come early in the morning or later in the evening”), listening to the boys’ choir at Saint Thomas Church Fifth Avenue (“the music is spectacular and the boys are my size”), taking in the one-man version of A Christmas Carol at the Merchant’s House Museum on East Fourth Street, or admiring an autographed copy of that book at the Morgan Library and Museum.

Now that A New York Christmas is a few years old, some of the listings are understandably out-of-date (R.I.P. Barneys department store). Even so, it still holds up as a fantastic, singular guide. This would truly make a great gift. The design is beautiful (instead of a bulleted list with plain old black dots, McCormac Groff uses green trees and red stockings), the writing is charming, and the knowledge runs deep. This little lady has a big holiday spirit. It’s never too late to let yourself be moved by it. Start by ordering a copy of A New York Christmas.