view from central park: tehilla r. goldberg

Enjoying New York’s winter lights

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The magic of fairytales is alive and well here in New York. Oh, how I have always loved looking at Manhattan’s wondrous, illuminated winter windows.

A friend and I met up on Fifth Avenue at Lord and Taylor, where this year’s window theme was “A Few Of Our Favorite Things.”

You never know what each opening window will give you a peek at.

It was late night by now. A good time to go, after most of the tourists had left the streets that just hours earlier were teeming with lines upon lines of people. It’s a beautiful cold New York night. Clean and wet after a recent rain shower.

I hadn’t worn the right shoes. Earlier in the day it was warm. The temperatures were plummeting, and fast. I was on the lookout for a store that might still be open in order to purchase some warm socks. We passed a homeless person on the street. My friend had a pair of gloves ready in her bag, to give to a homeless person. Rabbi Alan Schwartz, her shul rabbi at Congregation Ohab Zedek on the Upper West Side, makes a point of distributing them to his congregants, encouraging them to be sensitive to the plight of others, arming them with tangible help to be given on the spot.

I finally find a shop where I purchase two pairs of thick warm socks. The homeless person is no longer there, though, and we continue up to Saks Fifth Avenue. Rather than passive, dressed-up holiday fashion, this was more like a mini Broadway show!

We cross the street toward Rockefeller Center to join the people huddling in the cold, cupping hot drinks, their phones above them to capture the magical theatrical scene. We watch it one more time before turning to Rockefeller’s famous rounded skating rink.

Meandering up the Avenue as the night kept getting colder and colder, on my right is a charming reading tableau of sculpted-in-white characters in different poses coming into view. Oh, I guess Barnes and Noble is in on the windows, too. I had thought it was more a fashion department store “thing.” A child cozily ensconced in a bunk bed within a tree house … dreamily reading, vintage balloon sticks topped, alternatively, by balloons or actual books, The Little Snow Plow and From Grit to Great.

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