A San Francisco Christmans Carol

The air is crisp now that we are in the holiday season, when most people think of Dickens, ice skating in Rockefeller Center, or even Christmas on Christmas Island. But San Francisco is a major destination for holiday shoppers and gawkers.

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Christmas in San Francisco.

We even have our own Christmas song.  Vic Damone’s ballad, Christmas in San Francisco, is played ad nauseam on bay area easy-listening radio stations but I never get sick of it for some reason.

Hotel concierge and management alike hunker down the day after Thanksgiving for the annual holiday onslaught of tourists and families visiting the city, and the venues showcasing holiday events also prepare for the throngs crossing their threshold.

It is always comforting to see A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens return to the American Conservatory Theater, or the Nutcracker return to the San Francisco War Memorial Opera House.  In fact, San Francisco has numerous holiday traditions unique to the city.

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San Francisco’s Union Square at Christmas

Union Square, San Francisco’s central gathering spot, has been ground zero for the holidays.  And the main anchor is the ice skating rink and hundred-foot Christmas tree.  In fact the ice skating rink has become so popular that you used to be only able to fall down trying to impress girls from Thanksgiving through New Year’s Eve.  Today the ice rink goes up on Veteran’s Day and stays up through the Martin Luther King holiday in January, the next year.

For the last 38 years, the SPCA hosts an annual adopt-a-pet drive at Macy’s flagship store on Union Square.  Puppies and kittens have free reign of the display windows at the Stockton and O’Ferrell Street corner  of the building, as they stumble about their holiday-theme settings.  Much to the delight of kids (and kids-at-heart) who wait with baited breath all year for this.  I suspect pliant parents succumb to their children’s’s desire to have a pet, thus making this such a successful program as it heads into its forth decade.

Just follow the Oohing and Ahhing of children’s giggles from 12:00pm noon to 6:00pm, Wednesdays thought Sundays though December 31st.

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Santa’s Mailbox at Macy's

Macy’s is also the traditional destination for all of your favorite Yule Tide activities such as giving Santa your wishlist.  It dedicates a whole floor to all things Christmas including a Christmas village where you can send a letter to Santa from a specially designed mailbox for the North Pole

If you have ever been to a major city, you have probably seen the ubiquitous double-decker bus tours from Grayline Tours.  In the concierge business they are known as Ho-Hos (Hop-on/Hop-off) tours, but during the holidays they add a special excursion, the Holiday Lights Tour. This special tour takes visitors to some of San Francisco’s most impressive Christmas light displays throughout the city.

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PHOTO: The  Fairmont Hotel’s Ginger Bread House

A few blocks up from Union Square, atop Nob Hill is the world famous Fairmont Hotel where Tony Bennett first sang his classic, I left My Heart in San Francisco.  But it is equally famous for its holiday Ginger Bread House.  This isn’t some display on a kitchen table, the Fairmont Ginger Bread House is life-size, which means you can walk through it.  Just don’t eat the walls.  They’ll know.

The latest holiday tradition are the winter-themed light displays projected on the blank sides of San Francisco buildings.  Peppered throughout the downtown area, half a dozen buildings serve as a multi-stored canvas for an impressive presentation using lasers to evoke the holiday spirit.  I have to say, when I first saw one projected to the side of the Crown Zellerbach building, it kind of stopped me in my tracks.

Here are a few upcoming holiday events which may interest you:

The San Francisco Ballet’s Nutcracker plays from December 6th though December 29th.

The Great Dickens Christmas Fair recreates Charles Dickens’ Victorian London at the Cow Palace, every weekend until December 22nd.

The San Francisco Symphony hosts The Muppet Christmas Carol in Concert, December  12th. and 14th.

Grace Cathedral welcomes Soulful Joy, December 20 at 7:30 pm. This eclectic ensemble of Jazz and Gospel music creates a new take on the traditional Christmas.