Carols, cake and snowflakes

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This was published 12 years ago

Carols, cake and snowflakes

Festivity never sleeps ... ice skating in New York

Festivity never sleeps ... ice skating in New YorkCredit: Getty Images

Mark Juddery does Christmas the American way.

FEW nations enjoy Christmas as much as the US. This is the land that gave us Jingle Bells and White Christmas, along with numerous classics of seasonal Hollywood schlock. And they helped turn St Nicholas into the jolly image of Santa Claus we all know so well. For a white Christmas in America, the following places will deliver.

Alaska

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Alaska is easily the closest American state to Santa's North Pole abode. Visitors are guaranteed a white Christmas. However, it is also one of the darkest days of the year. In Anchorage, Alaska's largest city, sunrise this year will be at 10.12am, with sunset at 3.44pm.

The days might be brief but the month before Christmas takes full advantage of the winter climate, beginning with a well-attended tree-lighting ceremony in Town Square Park on Thanksgiving weekend. The footpath is internally heated and the park centre becomes an ice-skating rink. Santa arrives in a sleigh pulled by actual reindeer (Alaskan natives) and distributes free hot cocoa and cookies to those who have braved the chill, which in December gets down to an average of minus 6 degrees.

Anchorage houses compete fiercely for the best Christmas lights and some householders even co-ordinate their lights to "dance" to a radio station. Every year for the past 30 years at the five-star Hotel Captain Cook, pastry chef Joe Hickel has baked a huge, 1500-piece gingerbread village, complete with houses, shops and a frozen lake.

Christmas is cold but it is no reason to stay at home.

Indeed, why stay in Anchorage? Santa's North Pole residence is only a few hours' drive north. The town of North Pole (population 2200), to be precise, where it is Christmas all year round. Seasonal decorations line the streets, which have names such as Kris Kringle Drive and Mistletoe Lane. At the North Pole Post Office, more than 400,000 pieces of mail arrive each year, addressed to "Santa Claus, North Pole, Alaska". Not surprisingly, North Pole is at its busiest in December, when visitors flock to Santa Claus House for a Christmas-themed park and a world-renowned ice-sculpting competition, Christmas in Ice. But it's a great place to spend Christmas, whatever the date.

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Garrison, North Dakota

The community of Garrison (population 1500) likes to have festivals. People visit from nearby states and Canada for the walleye fishing festival, the kite festival, even the August beach party on the banks of Lake Missouri. The highlight of the town's calendar, however, is the annual Dickens Village Festival, inspired by Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol. In the past 20 years, it has transformed Garrison's Main Street into a village from Victorian London, in which the businesses have appropriately Dickensian names (Ye Olde Malt Shoppe, Fezziwig's).

"First thing Friday, the day after turkey day [Thanksgiving, November 26], we don our costumes, pipe Christmas music out onto the street and begin practising our English accents," says one of the festival organisers, Jude Iverson, who also runs the Cricket on the Hearth guesthouse, which is named after one of Dickens's lesser-known Christmas stories. "Visitors will hit town around noon and we had better be ready." Locals roam the streets dressed like characters from a Victorian-era English novel. Each year, they perform a different version of A Christmas Carol in the evening. Other events include old-fashioned English feasts, magic lantern shows and more unusual events such as the fruit cake toss.

"Americans joke about how horrible fruit cake tastes," Iverson says. "Some of us, like me, love the stuff. But nevertheless we have a lot of fun abusing fruit cake by having a contest to see who can throw one the farthest. Can you believe they actually use real fruit cake? Dozens of them just thrown around the city park! Birds probably think it's great."

New York

New York might be an ideal place to celebrate Christmas, simply because it's the centre of perhaps the greatest Christmas custom: rampant consumerism. Although many shops are closed, the city remains open. Department stores compete with each other for glamorous Christmas displays.

In recent years, the famous Macy's post-Christmas sale has begun on Christmas Day instead of the day after.

Of course, Christmas in New York offers more than just shopping. Since 1931, an annual attraction has been the Rockefeller Centre Christmas tree. The seven-storey spruce is decorated with eight kilometres of solar-powered lights and a 250-kilogram, Swarovski crystal-studded star. Like this tree, other Christmas traditions in New York have become as reliable as nativity scenes and roast turkey: the Radio City Christmas Spectacular (where, for the first time, the Rockettes will perform their high-kicking dance routines in "3DLive"); New York City Ballet's production of The Nutcracker (with marching toy soldiers and a glowing, one-tonne Christmas tree); and the lights of Dyker Heights, which draw visitors to Brooklyn.

In the week before Christmas, hotels have more vacancies as business travel winds down for the holidays. The weather, however, is unpredictable. I had Christmas in New York four years ago and though it was cold, I could only dream of a white Christmas. Those who found themselves knee-deep in snow last year, unable even to open their front doors, might wonder why I was complaining. Nevertheless, this is New York. At the most celebrated time of the year, you can depend on this city to put on a show.

The writer flew courtesy of United Airlines.

Three other Christmas hotspots

1 St James Parish, Louisiana In a ritual dating back more than a century, locals build 100 towering bonfires over a 15-kilometre stretch of the Mississippi River ... then light them all at 7pm on Christmas Eve. Result: a spectacle that, combined with beer, cook-offs and fireworks, inspires an all-night party.

2 California Christmas parades are all over the nation but in San Diego, Newport Beach, Oakland and other coastal areas, parades are on the water, with boats lit up, rather than floats. The Lighted Yacht Parade on the Oakland/Alameda Estuary, one of the largest, is an extravagant annual procession of more than 100 vessels.

3 Everywhere For those who have no fireplace to burn their own log, the New York-based WPIX network broadcasts a burning fireplace on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. It will be just like having your own yule log ... without the heat.

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