How NYC Invented Christmas: Self Guided Walking Tour

On Seventh Avenue in Chelsea you hear the story of "A Visit from St. Nicholas", which Clement Clarke Moore is said to have written for his six children on Christmas Eve 1822, of the family friend who sent it to the Troy Sentinel, and of the eight reindeer it named for the first time.(3 min)

Outside Macy's on Herald Square you hear the story of Macy's holiday windows, from the porcelain dolls R.H. Macy posed in the window of his 14th Street store in 1874, to a steam-powered window in 1883, the move here in 1902, and the years Santa Claus unveiled the windows after the Thanksgiving Day Parade.(5 min)

On West 34th Street, above the subway tunnels, you hear about the Holiday Nostalgia Train: eight R1/9 cars from the Independent Subway System, built in the Great Depression, with rattan seats, paddle ceiling fans and incandescent bulbs, said to be the cars that inspired Billy Strayhorn's "Take the A Train". No ride is included.(3 min)

On Lexington Avenue you hear how Edison's business partner Edward H. Johnson lit an electric Christmas tree at his Murray Hill townhouse in 1882, with red, white and blue bulbs the size of walnuts on a box that turned six times a minute, and how people came by to see it through his windows.(3 min)

In Duffy Square you hear how Thomas Nast drew Santa Claus for Harper's Weekly, first on January 3, 1863, in a jacket of stars and pants of stripes in a Union Army camp, and how his 33 Santas for the magazine, the most famous "Merry Old Santa Claus" of 1881, shaped the Santa we still recognize.(3 min)

At Rockefeller Center you hear the story of the Italian excavation workers who pooled their pay on Christmas Eve 1931 for a 20-foot balsam fir, which their families hung with cranberry garlands and paper chains, and of the 300 tuba players Harvey Phillips brought to the rink in 1974 for the first TubaChristmas.(4 min)

On Lexington Avenue, near Serendipity 3 on East 60th Street, you hear how the restaurant opened in 1954 in a basement hung with Tiffany lamps and church medallions, how its Frozen Hot Chocolate became its signature, and the story that Andy Warhol, a regular, paid his bills with drawings.(3 min)

Outside the New-York Historical Society on Central Park West you hear about its first St. Nicholas dinner, on December 6, 1810, when John Pintard had the artist Alexander Anderson make the first American illustration of St. Nicholas, with a purse of money, a birch rod and a fat Dutch pug dog.(3 min)