City Desk: A City Christmas.(Column)

What is the city of Christmas in the English-speaking world? Probably still 19th-century London, thanks to Charles Dickens and A Christmas Carol, but surely New York is in the running. Three New Yorkers -- Washington Irving, Clement Moore, and Thomas Nast -- invented Santa Claus; New York has the tree at Rockefeller Center and the Rockettes at Radio City. Why then is Christmas so lonely here?

One of the great engines of loneliness is the ubiquitous music. December is make-or-break month for the stores, which must put shoppers in the mood, and to that end they cue up their seasonal soundtracks. The performances are generally bad, either the emotional absolute zero of Muzak, or the scut work of celebrities shuffling through an early- morning recording session some long-ago summer in L.A. or Nashville (Nat King Cole Sings . . .; Willie Nelson's Favorite . . .). The songs are generally bad too, since most of them are not actual Christmas carols. This season I did hear a steel drummer pinging out "Silent Night." You could imagine the vocal:

Silent Night, 'Oly Night,

Son of God, 'E love pure light, mon!

But carols, with their unavoidable religious content, especially in the seldom-sung second and third verses (Pleased as man with man to dwell, / Jesus, our Emmanuel) are somewhat off-message, so more often we find ourselves serenaded with calendar songs: songs about the Christmas season. The immemorial theme of these songs is how much fun we are having. Since they cannot celebrate the Incarnation, they can only celebrate celebration. Daughter sees Mommy kissing Santa Claus, chestnuts roast on the open fire, Rudolph embraces his outer nose, Frosty melts but amusingly, sleigh bells ring in the night thick with stars and laughter. But suppose we are not having fun? Or that we are not having that much fun (only someone on laughing gas could be)? Then the emotion produced by these forced marches of jollity is gloom.

One Christmastime, over a late lunch in a thinned-out restaurant, I had an experience I can never have again: hearing the lyrics of "I'll Be Home for Christmas" for the first time. The performer was Frank Sinatra, the American Fischer-Dieskau. Singing with passion and tact, he came to the final revelation that he would be home for Christmas, "if only in my dreams." I was by myself. Finally, someone told the truth.

The second enforcer of isolation and solitude is crowds. New Yorkers are no strangers to crowds, but at Christmastime rush hour becomes rush month. Our ranks are swollen not just by the usual Long Islanders and New Jerseyites, but by heartlanders and foreigners. They come here not to sightsee but to shop. We are the 14th Street of the globe, the flea market of four continents. We welcome them; they pay such a big chunk of our wages and our taxes. But they are so in the way. The New Yorker expresses politeness by haste; he ...