It was less than a week until Christmas and the city was decked out for the holiday like a turkey with all the trimmings. Strings of colored lights festooned the venerable buildings like flashy jewelry on a woman too old to wear it, and plastic icicles hung from every streetlamp. In Union Square, an immense tree decked out with crimson balls reminiscent of Maraschino cherries towered skyward, held up by an intricate set of cables tastefully concealed beneath heaps of sparkly fiberglass, no doubt intended to represent snow.
As I sauntered through this Yuletide wonderland, the sun beamed down on my head and perspiration pooled in my armpits under my chic East Coast pea coat. Many of the women I passed seemed to be suffering similar delusions that December was the time to whip out the cute winter woolens and a Burberry scarf flapped from the handbag of a passing red-faced holiday shopper.
But San Francisco, despite the weather, was not to be denied its share of a white Christmas. Entering Macy’s, I found my way blocked by mounds of fake snow as tall as I was. Atop the drifts, a charming woodland scene played out in the shadows of a pine grove, as two impossibly fuzzy rabbits chased each other while a Swiss girl with braids chortled merrily at them from the window of a nearby cottage.
With visions of industrious elves and toys galore enticing me onward, I followed the directions of a peppermint-striped sign and hopped on the escalator to the North Pole, located on Floor One.
Upon my arrival, however, I realized that reaching Santa and his workshop was no easy feat. The North Pole was a madhouse of strollers, bags, harried parents and tiny tots in various stages of scampering, screaming and suffocating themselves with fake snow. The line to the throne where Santa waited was packed with weary adults, whose charges dashed about unattended. Overwhelmed-looking Macy’s employees in festive headgear tried without success to maintain order.
A little boy with pirate eye patches covering both eyes ran headlong into a life-size wooden nutcracker, fell back to the ground and began to sob. Nearby, two girls wearing matching sets of purple mittens were in the process of feeding each other great mouthfuls of snow, while a Macy’s employee futilely attempted to discourage them by offering them candy canes, which they blithely ignored.
“They should really have this better organized,” a woman next to me announced loudly to her companion, nudging her collapsing mountain of gift-wrapped presents forward as the line inched toward St. Nick. “We’ve been waiting here almost an hour.”
Finally abandoning all hopes of seeing the jolly old fellow myself, I turned on my heels and fled up the nearest escalator and out the door as fast as I could, scattering a blizzard of fake snow in my wake. The impression of having been assaulted by an elf packing a cudgel danced in my head.
Outside, I took a deep breath. The sunshine and conspicuous lack of winter scenery came as a welcome relief after the intensity of seasonal cheer I had just experienced.
I searched for something less cloying to restore my spirits and found comfort in the one-legged Vietnam veteran aggressively demanding money of all who passed. Too laden with overstuffed shopping bags to stop, most people hurried by him, eyes carefully averted, while he hurled curses at them, brandishing his tattered cardboard sign like a weapon.
As I stood there, the eye patch boy and his mother emerged from Macy’s. No longer crying, he slurping on a candy cane. The two made a beeline past the angry amputee, pushed through the sidewalk’s crowds for thirty feet or so, crossed the street to avoid the animal-rights protestors in front of Urban Outfitters, and disappeared through the swinging glass doors of Tiffany’s.
